Chemotherapy: principles in practice--a case study of the Philippines.

This paper reports on the principles that form the basis of chemotherapy and examines the operational considerations that affect their practice in a developing country like the Philippines, where malaria endemicity is synonymous with difficult topography, poor public health infrastructure, and alternative means of obtaining medication. The practice of using microscopic diagnosis for radical treatment is followed routinely and uniformly. Where policy dictates that all fever cases be screened, the result is an overload of the system and a corresponding delay in the slide-examination rate which makes such microscopic diagnosis cease to serve as a basis for prompt radical treatment and control in transmission.