Rapid Malaria Diagnostic Tests in Fever Patients Attending Primary Health Care Facilities in Zanzibar - Effectiveness as Diagnostic and Surveillance Tool in the New Context of Low Malaria Endemicity

During the last 6 years Zanzibar has undergone a dramatic change in malaria epidemiology and burden of disease, with a marked decline of Plasmodium falciparum malaria among febrile children from approximately 30% to 1% or below and a reduction of crude child mortality of 50% Overuse of the expensive ACTs will not only be a substantial financial burden on the health care system in Zanzibar, but will also spur anti-malarial drug resistance with devastating effect on global malaria control efforts and prevent other causes of fever from being appropriately treated, e.g. pneumonias which require antibiotics. Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs), based on antigen detection of P. falciparum, are proposed as a future cornerstone to improve diagnostic efficiency also at the peripheral health care level beyond the reach of microscopy services

IMCI algorithms based on clinical symptoms could potentially be made more efficient and cost effective if simple parasitological diagnostic methodologies were incorporated. Zanzibar is among the first regions to incorporate RDT in the IMCI guidelines in Africa, which provides a unique research opportunity to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of incorporating RDT in the existing IMCI algorithm.

Another key challenge for Zanzibar is to monitor potential development of parasite resistance to ACT when the number of malaria positive patients is insufficient to conduct standard in vivo efficacy trials. We propose that RDT could play a critical new role also in this regard.