Once these are overcome however, the implementation of the new WHO smear microscopy policy recommendations together with LED-FM could substantially reduce the workload and increase case detection.
In 2004, the Ministry of Health issued the policy of decentralising microscopy services (MCs) to one third of all township hospitals in China.
To quantify the likely impact of recent WHO policy recommendations regarding smear microscopy and the introduction of appropriate low-cost fluorescence microscopy on a) case detection and b) laboratory workload.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently made policy recommendations relevant to sputum microscopy in settings with well-functioning External Quality Assessment (EQA) schemes.
In 2004, a national policy was introduced to decentralise microscopy services into one third of all township hospitals in China.
Since January 2009, in response to increasing reports of P. knowlesi infections and the difficulties of diagnosing this species by microscopy, it became policy at KDH to send slides that had been determined by microscopy to show presence of P. malariae to the Sabah State Reference Laboratory for PCR confirmation.
Therefore the finding of this study will alert trainers to plan for enhanced quality of AFB microscopy trainings and policy makers in tuberculosis control program to give attention to continuous on job AFB microscopy training towards enhanced case detection and better control of tuberculosis.
The current WHO treatment policy recommends prompt parasitological confirmation by microscopy or rapid diagnostic tests, where available [29].
Through implementing new policy recommendations and LED-based fluorescence microscopy the current laboratory staff complement could investigate the same number of patients, examining auramine-stained smears to an extent that is equivalent to a 10 minutes ZN smear examination.
National policy recommends that all patients with microscopy-diagnosed malaria be hospitalized until negative blood smears are obtained on 2 consecutive examinations.
The national policy of MC only decentralised limited functions of microscopy screening service, which did not effectively benefit TB suspects, and lead to suboptimal use of limited resources.
