Prevalence, Testing and Treatment Patterns of Malaria; A Hospital Based Five-Year Analyses by Age in Kwaebibirem, Eastern Ghana

Abstract

Objective: Malaria, caused by single-celled microorganisms of the plasmodium group, is a mosquitoborne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Objectives prioritizing control and elimination led to the T3 policy (i.e., ‘Test, Treat and Track’) encouraging scale up of diagnostic testing, treatment and surveillance. This study analyses the prevalence of malaria infection andassesses health institutional compliance with policy directives for testing before treatment of all clinically suspected malaria cases.Methodology: A 5-year record review of malaria morbidity, 2014-2018, was completed with the DHIMS-2 web-based database using a cross sectional study design.Results: Despite a downward trend that decreased with increasing age through adolescence, higher proportions of hospital clients aged ≤ 28 days to 17 years were subjected to confirmatory malaria tests. This remained comparatively low among adults. The highest yield of positive malaria tests was observed among patients aged 1 month to 17 years. Malaria’s morbidity burden remained highest among hospital clients aged 1 month to 15 years of age while the highest proportion of hospital clients treated without priorconfirmatory tests was observed among the ages of 18 to 70 years and above. Proportion of patients treated for malaria without prior confirmatory tests therefore increased with increasing patient age.Conclusion: Isolated cases of presumptively treated malaria suggest that universal compliance with the first T of the T3 policy is yet unattained, potentially invalidating quality of the other Ts.Recommendations: Correlates for presumptive treatment should be investigated to facilitate acceleration towards attainment of universal compliance with the T3 policy.