A qualitative study of health professionals’ uptake and perceptions of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Burkina Faso
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Since 2012, rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) for malaria have been in use nationwide in Burkina Faso. The objective is to strengthen health professionals' diagnostic capabilities and promote good therapeutic practices. A qualitative study was conducted to learn about the adoption of this tool in the natural context of a national scale-up policy. METHODS: This study involved five health centres in two health districts. Twenty-eight individual interviews were conducted in 2013 with health professionals and members of the health district management teams. Health professionals' RDT use and drug prescription practices were observed during 278 curative care consultations over 5 weeks. RESULTS: Health professionals assessed the use of RDT positively as it allowed them to reach clear and accurate diagnoses and above all to deliver appropriate, rational care. However, the introduction of RDTs did not really change their diagnostic practices or prescribing practices for artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT). They continued to rely predominantly on symptoms in establishing their diagnoses because of doubts regarding the reliability of the tests and the occasional stockouts of RDTs experienced by the health centres. Patients with negative RDT results continued to receive anti-malarial treatments. However, the situation remains quite heterogeneous. CONCLUSION: The use of RDTs points to the co-existence of official standards and different standards applied in practice. Setting up regular supervision activities provided an opportunity to observe and understand the various obstacles encountered by health professionals and to monitor how official directives are put into practice. For efficient use of RDTs and their results, health professionals need information and directives that are up-to-date and standardized.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".