Management of admitted malaria cases in four major hospitals of Delhi: a case study.

The study showed that none of the hospitals either followed the international coding system for recording or adopted the National Malaria Eradication Programme guidelines for diagnostic criteria of malaria, I.e. by blood smear examination. Diagnosis of malaria in three out of four hospitals was not preceded by blood examination in all cases. Only 55% of the 283 clinically suspected malaria cases were screened for malaria parasite with overall positivity of 20.14 per cent and 38.25 per cent in examined cases. Age and sex break-up indicated that males suffered more and 65 per cent of the patients belonged to 16-40 years' age groups as compared to 38.4 per cent population falling in this age group according to 1981 census. Out of 263 recovered study cases, 13 per cent came from adjoining stats while this percentage went up to 35 per cent (7 out of 20 cases) in the case of malaria deaths