Plasmodium vivax Radical Cure Risk Benefit Assessment Tool
What is P. vivax radical cure?
Radical cure refers to the treatment of hypnozoites to prevent relapses. At present, 8-aminoquinolines are the only drug class available for radical cure.
What is the P. vivax radical cure risk benefit assessment tool?
The P. vivax radical cure risk benefit assessment tool provides decision-making guidance to support national malaria programs in the selection of Plasmodium vivax radical cure schemes in consideration of the local epidemiology of malaria and G6PD deficiency, effectiveness of different treatment regimen to prevent relapses, supervision or no supervision of treatment, and availability of point-of-care G6PD testing.
National programs provide data inputs regarding epidemiology of malaria, G6PD deficiency, and designates the site of interest as low- or high-risk for hemolytic events. Regarding risk of recurrences for the different treatment schemes, the tool provides defaults based on available data from the LAC region through an online model built in RStudio Shiny, an R package that enables interactive websites. These inputs can be changed if other inputs better represent the site of interest.
Who should use this tool and how?
This tool was developed for use by National Malaria Programs and Ministries of Health in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region to support decision-making regarding safe and optimal effectiveness of radical cure treatment regimens and delivery strategies at national and subnational levels. However, other regions may find the tool useful in its current form or they can adapt it to their use. The tool is not intended to provide a specific recommendation regarding the optimal treatment regimen in a particular setting. Rather, it is intended to inform the decision-making process, which will ultimately take into consideration factors not considered in this tool (e.g., cost, health system capacity, and strength of available data as relevant to the local setting).