Clinical audit of malaria diagnosis in urban primary curative care clinics, Zimbabwe

Clinical audit was performed on the accuracy of malaria diagnosis by nursing staff within Harare City Health Department using diagnosis by doctors as the reference standard. This was found to be about 10 pc based on symptoms. The criteria for diagnosis of malaria as in ZEDAP manuals and in-house training were not being utilised. Pyrexia was not present in 40 pc of the patients. Serious illnesses were occasionally dismissed as malaria and not treated appropriately or reviewed. The most common misdiagnosis was of acute respiratory tract infections which also have clear guidelines for diagnosis. More appropriate training methods need to be developed to improve the diagnostic capacity of nursing staff who are frontline providers of primary health care. This study shows the importance of performing an audit for process evaluation, compared to set standards and to be used for improving the quality of services.