Mobile phones improve case detection and management of malaria in rural Bangladesh

Malaria Journal

Research

Laura J Edwards¹  Chai S Prue²  Wasif A Khan²  Sabeena Ahmed²  Jacob Khyang²  Mohammad S Hossain²  Malathi Ram³  Timothy Shields³  David J Sullivan³  David A Sack³  Gregory E Glass³  Myaing M Nyunt³  Kerry L Shannon⁴ 

[1] Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, USA;International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Dhaka, Bangladesh;The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA;The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA;The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA;

关键词: Mobile phones;    Malaria;    Bangladesh;    Rapid test;    Artemisinin;    Surveillance;    Rapid diagnostic test;    mHealth;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-12-48

 received in 2012-11-08, accepted in 2013-01-28,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe recent introduction of mobile phones into the rural Bandarban district of Bangladesh provided a resource to improve case detection and treatment of patients with malaria.MethodsDuring studies to define the epidemiology of malaria in villages in south-eastern Bangladesh, an area with hypoendemic malaria, the project recorded 986 mobile phone calls from families because of illness suspected to be malaria between June 2010 and June 2012.ResultsBased on phone calls, field workers visited the homes with ill persons, and collected blood samples for malaria on 1,046 people. 265 (25%) of the patients tested were positive for malaria. Of the 509 symptomatic malaria cases diagnosed during this study period, 265 (52%) were detected because of an initial mobile phone call.ConclusionMobile phone technology was found to be an efficient and effective method for rapidly detecting and treating patients with malaria in this remote area. This technology, when combined with local knowledge and field support, may be applicable to other hard-to-reach areas to improve malaria control.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Prue et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.