Unravelling the quality of malaria microscopy across Kinshasa, DR Congo.

Introduction: In the current study we assessed clinical laboratories' staff ability across the city of Kinshasa with particular focus on their practices and performance regarding malaria microscopy.

Materials And Methods: This was a non-random cross-sectional study included clinical laboratories in Kinshasa and focused on cross-checking of blood slides, a questionnaire and checklist according to standardised analytic malaria microscopy procedures. Regarding the cross-checking of slides, participant responses were considered 'corrects' in cases of complete congruence with the reference; 'acceptable' for malaria-positive slides but no identification of species, stage of development, parasite density and/or reported as instead of 'P.