Malaria Diagnosis Quality Management System in Malaria Clinics, Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate malaria diagnosis quality management system in malaria clinics of Thailand, and to use the results to maintain or improve malaria diagnosis quality management system for the effectiveness and reliability of the malaria diagnosis by using the CIPP Model (context, input, process and product) as the tool in evaluation. The research data drawn and assessed for this study were received from existing documents of malaria diagnosis quality management system in malaria clinics projects, namely [1) the project of quality control on malaria rapid test kit (QC-malaria RDT project), 2) The project of international standard accreditation of diagnostic control and identification on malaria (rechecking project) and 3) the project of the proficiency testing on malaria diagnostic staff in malaria clinics (proficiency testing project)], the implementations reports in fiscal year 2013-14 and some questionnaires from related staff for suspect issues. Data were be analyzed through statistical analysis term (frequency, percentages and means) by Excel program for windows. The study results were evaluated through 4 issues such as context, input, process, and products. Context evaluation found that for Project 1: the objectives were not consistently with the principle and rationale. For input evaluation found Project 1 on the issues of budget, materials and personnel were not sufficiently, while project 2 lacked of personnel and project 3 showed budget, materials and personnel were sufficiently. For the process evaluation, all three projects were implemented as planned. For product evaluation, Project 1 showed a test results at 100%, Project 2 in fiscal year 2013 displayed mistaken diagnosis in the malaria clinics with a high numbers of slides, Project 3 revealed the twice times of evaluation of proficiency testing at  70.83% and 93.30%, respectively. This study recommended that the skill performance evaluation should be added in using malaria rapid test kits in QC-malaria RDT project. While the rechecking project could increase the percentage of rechecked slides in low endemic malaria areas and the proficiency testing project should expand into other sections.