KHRC trains microscopists from NMIMR and NHRC.

Microscopy continues to be the gold standard for malaria diagnosis in routine care in health services as well as intervention research. It is however subjective and could lead to diagnostic errors such as false negatives, false positives, inaccurate parasite quantification and speciation in situations where the microscopist does not have the requisite equipment, is not well-trained and/or motivated.

A five (5) – day microscopy training was held at the Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC) from the 18th – 22nd January, 2010. This was organised and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, USA (NIH). The training was facilitated by expert microscopists from KHRC. The training brought together lab managers and lab technicians from the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and the Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC). In all, a total of eight (8) participants were drawn from NMIMR (2), NHRC (5) and the NIH (1).

Participants were pre-tested to evaluate their quality of reading malaria slides, parasite detection and malaria speciation. PowerPoint presentations were made to help participants on how to identify the malaria species and other blood parasites (such as microfilaria, Trypanosomes and Leishmania), how to identify the four human Plasmodium (malaria) species and the best method for calculating the quantity of malaria parasites. There was a post-test which showed a significant improvement in participants’ reading of malaria slides.

A participant and the initiator of the training, Mr. Faisal Ibrahim, who is the Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) technical advisor of the NIH indicated that the training was beneficial to them. He said it was an opportunity to exchange information and they had also learnt a great deal from the workshop. He added that the workshop was impressive and suggested that it should be organised regularly for the local laboratories and the local hospitals in Ghana because in his view, that would really augment the quality of malaria microscopy.

He expressed some words of gratitude to KHRC. “On behalf of the US/NIH and NMIMR, I would like to thank KHRC for organising and putting together such a huge workshop with excellent presentation and devoting a whole week of their busy schedules to spend the time with us teaching malaria microscopy. I really appreciate the time they have used to prepare the presentations to teach us and their hospitality”.

On behalf of KHRC, the Acting Director at the time, Dr. Sam Newton thanked participants for going through a successful training in microscopy. He said the doors of KHRC were always open to train microscopists once the facilitators were prepared. He wished participants well as they travelled back to their destinations with the hope of seeing them again some other time. He mentioned that if participants had suggestions as to how to improve upon the training next time, the Centre would appreciate it.