The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene
July 14, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Training Data Recorders with a Manual to Take High-Quality Trachoma Photographs in South Sudan.
Bearden-Muse M, Presley NA, Ohidor S, +9 more, Nash SD.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
A new training manual successfully taught local staff in South Sudan to take high-quality eye photographs for trachoma screening, enabling over 99% of images to be usable for grading even in a low-prevalence setting where standard field grading is becoming harder to do reliably.
What was studied
A training evaluation study assessing a newly published manual for teaching data recorders to take conjunctival (eye) photographs for trachoma grading, implemented during the Enhancing the 'A' in SAFE study in South Sudan in 2023.
Key findings
- Five of 10 trainees passed the training and became certified photographers and data recorders.
- These certified individuals took 7,064 smartphone photographs from 1,766 children during the study.
- Over 99% of eyes had at least one gradable photograph, as determined by expert graders at a central grading center.
Clinical relevance
Trachoma elimination program managers in low-prevalence settings, where traditional in-person grading becomes less reliable, can use this validated training manual to build local capacity for photography-based screening as an alternative to standard field grading.
Limitations
Only half of the trainees passed certification, suggesting the training approach, while successful for those who passed, may need refinement to improve the overall pass rate for scaling across programs.
Trachoma programs transitioning from field grading to photography-based screening in low-prevalence areas should use this validated training manual, while planning for the fact that not all trainees will pass certification on their first attempt.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
When a country has reached a low trachoma prevalence, it can be difficult to reliably train survey graders to accurately grade trachoma signs. Conjunctival photography provides an opportunity to capture images for grading. Recently, a training manual targeting survey data recorders was published. In July 2023, this manual was used during a photography training, after which certified trainees served as data recorders and photographers during the Enhancing the 'A' in SAFE (ETAS) study in South Sudan. Five of 10 trainees passed the training and became certified. These individuals took 7,064 smartphone photographs (two photographs per eye) of 1,766 children during the ETAS study. Certified photograph graders at the Gondar Grading Center in Ethiopia determined that nearly all eyes (>99%) had at least one gradable photograph. The new manual successfully facilitated the training of data recorders to take gradable conjunctival photos and will be an important tool for trachoma programs.
DOI
10.4269/ajtmh.26-0213
PMID
42447856
PMCID
PMC13539812
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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