Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The study is aimed at determining the reliability of rapid diagnostic tests in the diagnosis of malaria.
METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional hospital-based study among 161 febrile under-five children without obvious focus of infection seen at GOPC of FMC, Bida. An HRP-2 based RDT and thick film microscopy were used for diagnosis. Data was analyzed and summarized by descriptive statistical methods, means, SD and Chi-square test for associations. With p value of ˂0.05.
RESULTS: Male to female ratio of 1.4: 1 in the participants with mean age of 31.75 ± 15.18 months (Mean ± SD). Malaria diagnosis by thick film microscopy (TFM) reported prevalence of 62.7 %, higher than 53.4% detected using RDT. Frequently affected age groups was 12-23 months. The outcome of TFM and RDT in febrile under-five child without obvious focus of infection was not influenced by the age and sex. Illness duration of three or more days (p <0.001*)and absence of cough were associated with positive RDT result (p <0.001*). Logistic regression analysis showed a significant positive relationship between duration of symptoms and positive RDT result. The accuracy of RDT was found to be 63.4% with 74.4% PPV, 50.7% NPV, false positive rate of 36.7% and false negative rate of 36.6%.
CONCLUSION: Findings in this study demonstrated the association between the rate of RDT positivity and the degree of parasitemia. Under field conditions, the RDT performance was below the WHO recommended requirements and the performance of this HRP-2 based RDT test was below the manufacturer’s preset performance level.
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