Home case management of malaria: an ethnographic study of lay people's classification of drugs in Suneka division, Kenya.

Lay people in malaria-affected regions frequently have to choose from many over-the-counter malaria management drugs, requiring them to be able to identify these medications and distinguish between them. Lay people make these distinctions at two levels - age of the patient and the whether he or she has fever, pain or malaria. Sometimes decisions are based on incorrect information given by friends and relatives, causing prolonged suffering to the patient, exacerbating chloroquine resistance and leading to resistance to the sulfodoxine/pyrymethamine drugs now recommended as first-line treatment in Kenya.