Abstract
Malaria is endemic in many tropical countries and causes the deaths of at least 1 000 000 people per year. People who live in non-endemic countries are also concerned by fatal cases when they travel to endemic areas for vacations or business (Ryan & Kain, 2000). Mainly, malaria diagnoses are made after return from travel and require biological tests. Besides blood smears, which remain the reference for malaria diagnosis, new rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are available. BinaxNOW Malaria (Binax) is an immunochromatographic test (ICT) that detects malarial antigens in patient blood (Murray et al., 2003). Both pan-specific (aldolase) and Plasmodium falciparum-specific (histidine-rich protein 2, HRP-2) antigens can be detected by this test with high sensitivity concerning P. falciparum detection. Many evaluation studies comparing these RDTs with traditional (e.g. thin or thick blood smear) or accurate (e.g. PCR) methods have been published. Sources of false positive (rheumatoid factor) or false negative (low parasitaemia) results with these test are known, but invalid cases have never been pointed out to our knowledge (Murray et al., 2003).