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`Lancet' publishes paper by Taiwan medical team

An article by Taiwan's medical mission in Malawi on fingerprint identification of AIDS patients was published in the latest edition of the British medical journal The Lancet, which came out last Saturday.

It is the first time the world's leading medical journal has published a paper by an overseas Taiwanese medical mission.

`Milestone'

The Department of Health (DOH) hailed the achievement as "a milestone in our nation's history of providing medical aid for foreign countries."

Written by Dr. Yu Kwang-leung (余廣亮), Dr. Chen Chih-cheng (陳志成) and three other doctors on the team, the article, "Fingerprint identification of AIDS patients on ART," explains how a fingerprint-identification system was established at the Mzuzu Central Hospital in Malawi.

Last May Malawai's Ministry of Health launched a national anti-retroviral therapy (ART) scale-up program.

Mzuzu Central Hospital in the north of the country opened an ART clinic -- the Rainbow Clinic -- for AIDS patients on July 1.

"To ensure the effective monitoring of drug distribution and adherence among eligible patients, we have introduced a fingerprint identification system [FPIS: one computer, one fingerprint recorder, one bar-code reader, one printer and software]," the doctors wrote in the medical journal.

Fraud protection

Fingerprinting is helpful in identifying registered AIDS patients and FPIS can be an important security measure to prevent impostors from fraudulently attempting to obtain anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, especially in a country without national ID cards or social security numbers, the doctors wrote.

Quick and accurate

For ethical considerations, the doctors wrote, FPIS uses only one fingerprint, which is matched to a registered number, to identify each patient quickly and accurately.

"FPIS can generate a specific bar-code number for each patient every time. This number can be attached to his or her own ARV drug tin and helps to trace the ARV drugs in case they are lost for sale in the market," they explained. "FPIS makes the follow-up of every patient's adherence to ARV drugs much easier and eliminates the need for laborious work such as entering and analyzing data manually."

Registration

From July to December last year a total of 1,100 eligible patients were registered at Rainbow Clinic, according to the paper.

The average cost of a standard FPIS set-up, suitable for a single clinic room, is US$2,000. Hospitals with more than one ART clinic room may need a centralized server for data storage and backup, which may result in higher costs.

Time saver

"However, we believe the digitalization of data management will save on cost in the long run ? From our experience, FPIS can be beneficial in reducing manpower requirements in ART clinics," the paper said.
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