Details:

Alternative Title:
Malar J
Personal Author:
Rowe, Alexander K. ; Kachur, S. Patrick ; Yoon, Steven S. ; Lynch, Matthew ; Slutsker, Laurence ; ... More +
Rowe, Alexander K. ; Kachur, S. Patrick ; Yoon, Steven S. ; Lynch, Matthew ; Slutsker, Laurence ; Steketee, Richard W. Less -
Description:
The global health community is interested in the health impact of the billions of dollars invested to fight malaria in Africa. A recent publication used trends in malaria cases and deaths based on health facility records to evaluate the impact of malaria control efforts in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Although the authors demonstrate the use of facility-based data to estimate the impact of malaria control efforts, they also illustrate several pitfalls of such analyses that should be avoided, minimized, or actively acknowledged. A critique of this analysis is presented because many country programmes and donors are interested in evaluating programmatic impact with facility-based data. Key concerns related to: 1) clarifying the objective of the analysis; 2) data validity; 3) data representativeness; 4) the exploration of trends in factors that could influence malaria rates and thus confound the relationship between intervention scale-up and the observed changes in malaria outcomes; 5) the analytic approaches, including small numbers of patient outcomes, selective reporting of results, and choice of statistical and modeling methods; and 6) internal inconsistency on the strength and interpretation of the data. In conclusion, evaluations of malaria burden reduction using facility-based data could be very helpful, but those data should be collected, analysed, and interpreted with care, transparency, and a full recognition of their limitations.
Subject:
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Commentary
Communicable Disease Control
Data Collection
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Health Facilities
Health Services Research
Humans
Malaria
Statistics As Topic

Source:
Malar J. 2009; 8:209.
Document Type:
Journal Article
Place as Subject:
Ethiopia ; Rwanda
Ethiopia ; Rwanda Less -
Collection(s):
CDC Public Access
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:a64c583a211538ef621c3f20790ab56259da2b3f1d68ed1e130a37d5e43bcaac
File Type:

Supporting Files

• 	1475-2875-8-209.nxml	txt
  	license.txt	txt

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