Abdul Waris, Hamayoun Rashid Rathor, Ashfaq Ahmad Khawaja Khail, Muhammad Afzal, Amin Ullah, Ahmad Ali.
Incidence of malaria and comparison of microscopy and rapid diagnostic test in district Dir Lower, Lower Dir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Pak J Public Health Jan ;6(1):59-64.

Introduction: Malaria is one of the oldest diseases known to human being. It was first reported as a "swamp disease" from ancient China in 2nd century BC. Its till remains one of the most deadly tropical disease taking each year 7, 81,000/- lives and causing 22 5million infections.1 Diagnosis of malaria must be prompt, as even a few hours delay in treatment can mean the difference between life and death. Microscopy is a gold standard for diagnosing of malaria but it requires a complete laboratory set up with a good microscope, reagents, slides and a trained microscopist. A second quick method is Rapid Diagnostic Test Kit which detects malaria parasite in the blood and does not ne ed laboratory set up and train ing19. Methods: Blood samples were collected from individuals presented with fever, persistent headache and malaria like symptoms. Patient's consent was obtained prior to sampling; finger prick blood was used for slide preparation and for Rapid diagnostic test. Thick and thin blood smears were prepared and stained by Giemsa stain (3% solution in 7.2 pH phosphate buffer). Sampling was carried out in District Dir, Pakistan from March 2013 to July 2013, in order to find out the malaria prevalence. Results: During the study period; 500 blood films of suspected malarial patients were prepared and examined. Their positivity rates for the infection of Plasmodium P.vivax and P.falciparum were 214, 212 and 2 respectively. In this duration, slide positivity rate (SPR), P.vivax positivity rate (VPR) and P.falciparum positivity rate (FPR) were 21.40%, 19.37% and 2.03% respectively Conclusion: The current study concludes that RDT based diagnosis methods can prove to be highly effective in improving the diagnosis of plasmodium and the species of plasmodium. RDT has an advantage of being simple, rapid and effective test in the diagnosis of malaria especially where well trained microscopists are not available or work load is too high. Keywords: Malaria, diagnosis, rapid di agnostic test, microscopy

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