Tropical Health Matters

Mildred Komey Akosua,* James Sarkodie, Kezia Malm1 Raphael Ntumy, and Gladys Tetteh presented a poster entitled “Systematic Approach to the Review of Malaria Management Guidelines Ghana, 2019” at the 68th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

The primary objective of the Ghana NMCP is to reduce morbidity & mortality due to malaria through effective strategies. Implementation of these effective malaria control strategies depends largely on the availability of up-to-date, evidence-based, and standardized reference materials to guide and improve practice. Guidelines for the management of malaria in Ghana, including the anti-malaria drug policy (ADP), guidelines for case management of malaria (CM) and guidelines for malaria in pregnancy (MiP) were last updated in 2014. The 2014 review took over six months and left behind no documented methodology to guide subsequent reviews.

The World Health Organization recommends a comprehensive review everyfive years. In order to make the 2019 review process concise, efficient and reproducible, the NMCP with support from the PMI Impact Malaria project outlined a methodical approach to the review.

The process established an oversight review committee; identified all stakeholders relevant to update the ADP and guidelines; prepared a reference package of technical resources and research findings; nominated experts and allocated them to topic-specific technical working groups (TWGs). (Fig 1)

Then, a series of TWG consultative meetings were held with clearly defined processes and outputs, and independent external experts and potential end users of the guidelines ratified the draft guidelines. (Fig 2 and Fig 3)

A final phase included development of training content, training manuals, and development of key job-aids. (Fig 4 and Fig 5) Costs for the review process were identified and funding obtained.

All components of the 2019 process were enhancements to the unrecorded 2014 review. The process resulted in a documented and costed methodological approach, an up-to-date ADP, MiP and CM guidelines, training curriculum, training manuals, and job aids; all developed in a timely and efficient manner over a three-month period.

It also resulted in an approach for achieving minor policy and guideline updates between comprehensive five-year reviews. Using a systematic well-defined comprehensive approach with clear expectations for inputs, process, outputs, roles, timelines, costs, and sequelae actions, results in up-to-date widely accepted policies and guidelines whose implementation can be easily operationalized, with mechanisms for minor guideline updates between comprehensive five-year reviews.

*Author affiliations: Ghana National Malaria Control Programme, PMI Impact Malaria Project, Jhpiego

TWITTER.COM/IMPACT_MALARIA; IMPACTMALARIA.ORG

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