3.1. Ethical approval
The ethical approval for this study was obtained from three institutional review boards: Makerere University's Faculty of Medicine Research Ethical committee (SOMREC Ref 2011–103); Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST Ref HS864); and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Ethics Committee (LSHTM Ref 5831).
4. Results
Focus group discussions conducted with community members provided a detailed account of their experiences with respect to intervention health centres, standard care health centres and health centres that were not part of the PRIME trial. The discussions showed mixed impact of the PRIME intervention as perceived by community members. Improvements were reported in some intervention health facilities in terms of the availability of RDTs and antimalarial drugs. At three of these, improvements in staff attitudes towards patients were also reported. In one health centre included in the intervention arm, no changes were reported in the quality of care except for the resources component, and respondents complained bitterly about the services. At all standard care centres, improvements in antimalarial drug availability were noted. However, no other improvements were noted and community members reported being disappointed with the quality of care received, except, at one standard care health centre, where community members were pleased with improvements. Focus group discussions conducted beyond a 2 km radius of any health centre showed that patients continued to attend their nearest health centre, whether the health centre was assigned to the intervention or standard care, or was not involved in the trial. A majority of respondents complained about the quality of services received.
Despite the different characteristics described by respondents about the various health centres available to them, when asked if they would return to that health centre again, all said they would. Below, we discuss these different outcomes and attempt to provide some context for understanding treatment seeking choices. We provide evidence that some of the PRIME evaluation activities were perceived as intervention and describe the terrain of other interventions and research activities which also formed a backdrop to the impact of PRIME.