The Fyodor Urine Malaria Test (UMT) has the potential to improve patient outcome and reduce the spread of drug resistance in malaria. It does not require a blood sample and is so easy to perform that it may be done at home. Studies on the test’s performance will show how it can be further improved.
Over the past decade, mass drug administration (MDA) and other approaches to mass screening and treatment have received increasing interest in the context of malaria elimination and, more recently, in emergency situations such as the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. MDA consists in the administration of a full dose of antimalarial treatment, irrespective of the knowledge of symptoms or presence of infection, to an entire population in a given area, except those in whom the medicine is contraindicated.
Health providers trained to perform malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) are still prescribing valuable malaria medicines to patients who do not have malaria, according to new research published in PLOS onE.
Over the past a number of decades, malaria diagnosis has changed really tiny. Following taking a blood sample from a patient, a technician smears the blood across a glass slide, stains it with a special dye, and looks under a microscope for the Plasmodium parasite, which causes the illness.
A Clinical Pharmacist and malaria focal person at the Ghana Police Hospital, Mrs. Ellen Sam, has warned Ghanaians, especially expectant mothers, against self-medication for malaria, since its impact could result in the fatal dissolving of a 1st trimester pregnancy.