The Impact of C-reactive Protein Testing

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of C-reactive protein (CRP) Point-of-care (POC) testing on health care worker prescribing behaviour in patients presenting to primary healthcare centres with an acute fever or recent history of fever. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES To assess the impact of CRP testing on clinical outcomes within the 14 days of follow-up. To assess the correlation between CRP results and clinical outcomes on the day 5 of the enrolment. To estimate the impact of CRP testing on antibiotic consumption after first consultation. To explore the attitudes of health centre staff towards the POC CRP test. To identify the prevalence of key pathogens in febrile patients in these settings. To validate the ability of CRP to discriminate between viral and bacterial pathogens in a subset of patients with a microbiologically confirmed diagnosis.