Bringing the state into the clinic? Incorporating the rapid diagnostic test for malaria into routine practice in Tanzanian primary healthcare facilities.

ABSTRACT: The roles that rapid, point-of-care tests will play in healthcare in low-income settings are likely to expand over the coming years. Yet, very little is known about how they are incorporated into practice, and what it means to use and rely upon them. This paper focuses on the rapid diagnostic test for malaria (mRDT), examining its introduction into low-level public health facilities in Tanzania within an intervention to improve the targeting of costly malaria medication. We interviewed 26 health workers to explore how a participatory training programme, mobile phone messages, posters and leaflets shaped the use and interpretation of the test. Drawing on notions of biopolitics, this paper examines how technologies of the self and mechanisms of surveillance bolstered the role mRDT in clinica

SUBMITTER: Hutchinson E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5526135 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature