Abstract:
Malaria is a serious and fatal disease caused by a parasite that can infect a certain type of
mosquito which feeds on human blood. It is a public health problem in Ethiopia and a major cause of illness
and death. More than 75% of the total land of Ethiopia is malarious a®ecting more than 68% of the
population, making malaria the leading public health problem in Ethiopia. In an e®ort to address such
problems, it is important to develop knowledge-based system (KBS) that can provide advice for health
professionals and patients to facilitate diagnosis and treatment of malaria patients. Experimental research
design was used to developed prototype system. Purposive sampling technique was used to select domain
experts for knowledge acquisition. The domain experts are selected from Jimma special hospital, Adama
hospital and Agaro health centre. The knowledge was acquired using both structured and unstructured
interviews from domain experts and represented by production rule, (if- then method). The user's acceptance
of the prototype system by visual interaction method that by showing the prototype system to the domain
experts was conducted result is 83.21%. In addition, performance of the prototype system was evaluated
using case testing method and produce result of 82.3%. It is promising to save the life of people in rural area
where there is scarcity of health professionals and apparatus. In addition, it is possible to reduce time and cost
of diagnosis and treatment in health centre by implementing intelligent systems. Developing in local languages, good interface programming language and in other techniques are the future works of the study.
