An intervention to improve lumbar puncture rates for meningitis surveillance in children at four secondary health facilities in Malawi: A before/after analysis.

Objectives: A lumbar puncture (LP) procedure plays a key role in meningitis diagnosis. In Malawi and other sub-Saharan African countries, LP completion rates are sometimes poor, making meningitis surveillance challenging. Our objective was to measure LP rates following an intervention to improve these during a sentinel hospital meningitis surveillance exercise in Malawi.

Methods: We conducted a before/after intervention analysis among under-five children admitted to paediatric wards at four secondary health facilities in Malawi. We used local and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines to determine indications for LP, as these are widely used in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The intervention comprised of refresher trainings for facility staff on LP indications and procedure, use of automated reminders to perform LP in real time in the wards, with an electronic data management system, and addition of surveillance-specific clinical officers to support existing health facility staff with performing LPs. Due to the low numbers in the before/after analysis, we also performed a during/after analysis to supplement the findings.

Results: A total of 13,375 under-five children were hospitalised over the 21 months window for this analysis. The LP rate was 10.4% (12/115) and 60.4% (32/53) in the before/after analysis, respectively, and 43.8% (441/1006) and 72.5% (424/599) in the supplemental during/after analysis, respectively. In our intervention-specific analysis among the three individual components, there were improvements in the LP rate by 48% (p < 0.001) following the introduction of surveillance-specific clinical officers, 10% (p < 0.001) following the introduction of automated reminders to perform an LP and 13% following refresher training.

Conclusions: This analysis demonstrated a rise in LP rates following our intervention. This intervention package may be considered for planning future facility-based meningitis surveillances in similar low-resource settings.