| Summary: | The study assessed the competency of community health volunteers in diagnosing pneumonia in
children through simple clinical signs. Data were collected by a group of research physicians
who observed the case management performance of 120 health volunteers in Bangladesh where
BRAe has been providing community-based acute respiratory infection (ARI) control
programme since mid 1992. About 1,166 children aged 3-60 months were diagnosed at
household level using simple signs. Findings revealed that the health volunteers' competency in
correctly diagnosing pneumonia and no pneumonia was quite high although they had difficulties
in diagnosing severe and very severe pneumonia cases. Among the clinical signs such as coarse
breath sounds and chest in-drawing, the correct diagnoses of pneumonia was lower than no
pneumonia. Overall agreement rates for most signs were very high. The study concludes that
the less educated health volunteers can also be effectively used in diagnosing pneumonia at
grassroots level in developing countries.
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