The Federal Government has commenced the training of Patent Pharmacists and Medicine Vendors (PPMV) on the use of Rapid Diagnostics Tests (RDTs).
Dr Nnenna Ezeigwe, the National Coordinator, National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), said this at the launch of the programme on Tuesday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the programme was tagged “National Guidelines on Diagnosis and Treatment of Malaria’’ in Nigeria.
Ezeigwe, who was represented by Mr Tim Obot, Assistant Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, NMEP, explained that the programme was designed to ensure that every case of fever was tested and confirmed before malaria treatment could be administered.
He said that it was a monitoring and supportive supervision of community pharmacists, essentially people who work at the community level and provide services.
Ezeigwe said that it would afford the NMEP an opportunity of building the capacity of the PPMVs.
He said that the National Council on Health has permitted the PPMVs to use the RDTs in their establishments, which was due to the recent policy called Test, Treat and Track (TTT).
“Now as a PPMV before you administer drugs to a patient for malaria treatment, you have to first perform RDT.
“Normally everybody that has malaria would show symptom of fever but not all fevers are caused by malaria; that is why you must test before you treat.
“And the approved treatment for malaria now is Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT).
“A lot of people do not like to go to the hospitals when they fall sick, they prefer to go to a pharmacist shop closest to them to buy drugs.
“And the pharmacist treats them based on assumptions but after this training which would end on Friday they would start doing the right thing which is test before treatment,’’ he said.
Ezeigwe said that the training would teach them the importance of testing before treatment and make them stop the use of mono-therapies such as the use of Chloroquine for the treatment of malaria.
He further said that when a new method was introduced into a system, it would take time for people to begin to understand the method.
He noted that a lot of training has being carried out by the programme and that more people were understanding it.
For instance, we had to ask the local government focal persons to tell us how to use the RDT and all of them were able to say correctly how the RDTs could be used.
According to him, this shows that more people have gotten use to it, and that over time everybody would get use to the method.
Mrs Lediju Margaret, Technical Assistant NMEP, demonstrated to the health workers the procedure on how to use the RDTs so that they can teach the PPMVs what they have learnt.
She said the team would be visiting Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, Agege, Surulere, Ifako-Ijaije, Amuwo-Odofin and Ojo local government areas of Lagos state to train the PPMVs on the use of RDTs.
She advised the health workers to read and follow instructions on each Care Start Pack, noting that each pack had a different instruction.
Besides, Lediju enjoined to check the expiry date, saying that an expired pack will not give a correct result and also that only technical fault would prevent it from giving an absolute result.
She described the method as simple, but a simpler method like the use of urine for testing was in the pipeline to avoid pricking patients.
