Impact of pre-packaging antimalarial drugs and counselling on compliance with malaria treatment at Port Moresby General Hospital Adult Outpatient Department. Impact of prepackaging antimalarial drugs on cost to patients and compliance with treatment. The effect of drug packaging on patients' compliance with treatment for Plasmodium vivax malaria in China. Telephone support to improve antiretroviral medication adherence: a multisite, randomized controlled trial.
We investigated the impact of pre-packaging antimalarial drugs and counselling on compliance with treatment of malaria at the Adult Outpatient Department of Port Moresby General Hospital. Adult patients who were prescribed standard antimalarial drugs following clinical and microscopic diagnosis of malaria were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an intervention group, where pre-packaging and counselling instructions were applied; control group A, with counselling but no pre-packaging; and control group B, with neither counselling nor pre-packaging. Patients were interviewed on two occasions, day 1 of treatment and day 4 post treatment. Of a total of 436 patients, 322 patients (179 males and 143 females) completed the study. Our data indicate an increase of 18% in compliance with treatment in the intervention group and 16% in control group A, when compared with control group B. While compliance with treatment was gender independent, the language spoken and used for giving instructions and counselling may have influenced patients' behaviour on prescribed medication. The results of our study indicate that a simple pre-packaging system and proper counselling could improve compliance with antimalarial drug treatment. As an additional beneficial observation, pre-packaging is likely to eliminate errors and possible contamination of the products during dispensing. To examine the extent to which district health teams could reduce the burden of malaria, a continuing major cause of mortality and morbidity, in a situation where severe resource constraints existed and integrated care was provided.
                Antimalarial drugs were prepackaged into unit doses in an attempt to improve compliance with full courses of chemotherapy.
                Compliance improved by approximately 20% in both adults and children. There were 50% reductions in cost to patients, waiting time at dispensaries and drug wastage at facilities. The intervention, which tended to improve both case and drug management at facilities, was well accepted by health staff and did not involve them in additional working time.
                The prepackaging of antimalarials at the district level offers the prospect of improved compliance and a reduction in the spread of resistance. A study conducted in 1994 showed that the use of blister packs containing antimalarial drugs significantly increased patients' compliance, compared with traditional means of dispensing drugs in a paper envelope. The present study assessed patients' compliance and compared the difference between 3-day chloroquine and 8-day primaquine courses of treatment for vivax malaria. The level of real compliance was determined by making the drugs with phenobarbital, and measuring its level in the blood following treatment. The results show that blister packaging significantly improved patients' compliance (p < 0.001) over traditional means of dispensing antimalarial drugs; there was no difference in treatment compliance between 3-day and 8-day courses when the drugs were in blister packs. However, with ordinary packaging the treatment compliance rate for an 8-day course was significantly less than for a 3-day course (P < 0.05). To determine whether proactive telephone support improves adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and clinical outcomes when compared to standard care.
                A multisite, randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted with 109 ART-naive subjects coenrolled in AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) 384. Subjects received standard clinic-based patient education (SC) or SC plus structured proactive telephone calls. The customized calls were conducted from a central site over 16 weeks by trained registered nurses. Outcome measures (collected over 64 weeks) included an ACTG adherence questionnaire and 384 study endpoints.
                For the primary endpoint, self-reported adherence, a significantly better overall treatment effect was observed in the telephone group (P = 0.023). In a post hoc analysis, composite adherence scores, taken as the first 2 factor scores from a principal components analysis, also found significant intervention benefit (P = 0.023 and 0.019 respectively). For the 384 primary study endpoint, time to regimen failure, the Kaplan-Meier survival curve for the telephone group remained above the SC group at weeks 20 to 64; a Cox proportional hazard model that controlled for baseline RNA stratification, CD4, gender, age, race/ethnicity, and randomized ART treatment arm suggested the telephone group tended to have a lower risk for failure (hazard ratio = 0.68; 95% confidence interval: 0.38 to 1.23).
                Findings indicate that customized, proactive telephone calls have good potential to improve long-term adherence behavior and clinical outcomes.
There is insufficient evidence to know if the effects of unit-dose packaged antimalarial drugs reduce treatment failure. Unit-dose packaging, supported by prescriber training and patient information, appears to improve participant-reported treatment adherence, but these data come from trials with methodological limitations.