Non-inferiority Trial of Conditional vs Universal Follow up for Children With Fever in Democratic Republic of Congo

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 3

Conditions: Fever

Treatments: Other: Conditional Advice

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Industry; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT02595827

68295

Details and patient eligibility

About

Providers in integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) programs in low resource settings often see children without any danger signs, presenting with fever but not having pneumonia, malaria, or diarrhea. These children are sent home (often with analgesic only), and caretakers are advised to return in 2 or 3 days. In this study, we are evaluating if conditional return advice (i.e. return in 2 or 3 day only if your child is still sick") results in the same proportion of children remaining with fever one week after identification, as the current universal return advice.

Full description

Fevers in childhood are common and usually self resolve. In rural Democratic Republic of Congo (and many other settings), when a febrile child presents to a community health worker (CHW), the child is assessed for malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea, and other danger signs, according to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) of childhood illnesses. In the cases where 1) there are no danger signs present, and 2) malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea have been ruled out, the CHW provides an antipyretic only, sends the child home, and advises all such cases to come back in 3 days. We hypothesize, however, that health outcomes for these cases will be equivalent if the CHW advises to come back in 3 days, only if symptoms have not resolved.

To test this hypothesis, we are conducting a cluster-randomized, community-based non-inferiority trial in two zones of Kalemie, Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. In this area, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been supporting the training, scale-up, and rollout of community health workers who conduct iCCM as per WHO guidelines and with Ministry of Health oversight. CHWs have unique non-overlapping catchment areas, and groups of CHWs (average 5-7) are associated with health clinics. We will utilize this group structure as the unit of randomization; health clinics (and thereby, groups of CHWs) will be randomly allocated to one of two groups in terms of the advice given to caretakers of children who have no danger signs, have neither malaria, pneumonia, nor diarrhea, and are thus classified as having fever of non-identified origin.

• Group 1 (Universal follow-up): CHWs in this group will advise caretakers to follow up in 3 days
• Group 2 (Conditional follow-up): CHWs in this group will advise caretakers to follow up in 3 days if symptoms/signs remain the same (or worsen).

Enrollment: 4,451 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 2 to 60 months old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Agree to recruitment script provided by CHWs at the time of identification of eligible

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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4,451 participants in 2 patient groups

Universal

No Intervention group

Description:

In this group, caretakers of children will receive the standard advice under current iCCM guidelines in DRC. Specifically, the CHW will advise that the child come back in 2-3 days.

Conditional

Active Comparator group

Description:

In this Conditional Advice group, caretakers will be given advice that is modified from the current iCCM guidelines. Specifically, the CHW will advise that the child come back in 2-3 days if the child's symptoms continue.

Treatment:

Other: Conditional Advice