Utility of rapid diagnostic tests and microscopy to detect malaria in health facilities across the Solomon Islands
Kerr, Genevieve, Wini, Lyndes, Leaburi, John, Macdonald, Joanne, and Russell, Tanya L. (2025) Utility of rapid diagnostic tests and microscopy to detect malaria in health facilities across the Solomon Islands. Malaria Journal, 24 (1). 219.
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Abstract
Background: Accurate and efficient malaria diagnosis is critical for effective malaria control and elimination. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) have been deployed over the last decade, particularly in rural and low-and-middle-income countries, as an alternative to microscopy-based diagnosis. Methods: This study analysed retrospective health data from the Solomon Islands District Health Information System (DHIS2) for 2017–2019, focusing on factors affecting diagnostic test selection and positivity rates for microscopy versus RDTs. Results: The national Annual Parasite Incidence (API) of malaria declined over the 3 years, with localised increases in specific health zones. The choice of malaria diagnostic test was associated with administrative division, patient age, health facility type and year. Overall, RDTs had higher malaria positivity rates than microscopy for both Plasmodium falciparum (microscopy, 6%; RDT, 11%) and Plasmodium vivax (microscopy, 10%; RDT, 14%). Conclusions: RDTs were more widely used than microscopy in health facilities and had higher test positivity rates. This study highlights the factors influencing diagnostic test selection and underscores the importance of considering detection limits and potential overdiagnosis when interpreting positivity rates from different diagnostic methods.
| Item ID: | 87702 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1475-2875 |
| Keywords: | DHIS2, Diagnosis, Malaria, Rapid diagnostic test |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jan 2026 04:44 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4202 Epidemiology > 420207 Major global burdens of disease @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 20 HEALTH > 2004 Public health (excl. specific population health) > 200404 Disease distribution and transmission (incl. surveillance and response) @ 100% |
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