Disease and treatment monitoring of malaria (DTMM): Case study - Ministry of Health

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of integrating the use of cell-phones into a routine malaria prevention and control programme, to improve the management of malaria among an under-served population in Uganda. The disease and treatment monitoring of malaria (DTMM) system, consisted of malaria patient investigations and following up for treatment compliance and patients’ symptoms. The methods used for data collection from the respondents were the Interviews and observations which helped to develop web-based and mobile technologies as a proof of concept, to replace the paper-based activities that malaria staff used in treating and caring for malaria patients in the villages. The system generated text and graph messages for a summary of malaria cases, basic statistics, and automatically fed to predetermined malaria personnel for situation analysis. The system provides a much better report of results about malaria patients. Compared to paper-based data, the mobile-phone-based malaria follow-up rates by malaria staff improved significantly. The module was successfully integrated and functioned as part of the malaria prevention and control programme. Despite the bias inherent in sensitizing malaria workers to perform active malaria follow-up using the mobile device, the study proved for its feasibility and the extent to which community healthcare personnel in the low resource settings could potentially utilize it efficiently to perform routine duties, even in remote areas.