341 International Conference of Science, Engineering & Environmental Technology (ICONSEET), 2(44): 341-346, 2017 ISSN 0794-9650 www.repcomseet.com Expert System for Diagnosis of Malaria and Typhoid Fever Kemi Olatunbosun 1 and Olutomilayo Olayemi Petinrin 2 1 Department of Computer Science, Federal Polytechnic, Ede, Nigeria 2 Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computing, UniversitiTeknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Email: tunbestoluwakemi@gmail.com Abstract- In Nigeria today, one of the most common forms of fever are malaria and typhoid. Malaria results in anemia meaning decrease in red blood cells. Health care facility should be accessible to patient at all-time but there has been problem in the access to the facilities because of the few facilities and qualified medical personnel are not always available. This study considers developing an expert system that could assist in diagnosing malaria, the system was developed using Visual Basic.Net and top-down approach was used for the system design. The data collected from the Federal Polytechnic Medical Centre covers seven months period. The total prescriptions issued for this period was 7525 and over 4117 patients out of these are affected by malaria and typhoid fever and this represents 54.71% of prescription issued. Considering the percentage of people being affected with malaria within a particular period, there is an urgent need for a system that will aid the immediate, accurate and reliable diagnosis which will aid and enhance the performance of a medical expert Keywords: Diagnosis, Malaria, Typhoid, and Expert system. 1. Introduction Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease affecting humans and other animals caused by parasitic protozoans (a group of single-celled microorganisms) belonging to the Plasmodium type. It is a life-threatening disease typically transmitted through the bite of an infected Anophelesmosquito. There are various reasons for the usual growth in the disease most especially in West Africa. Some of these reasons include: ignorance, environmental factors and the low percentage of medical practitioners who are keen at diagnosing and providing medical care to patients of this disease. The lastly mentioned reason is seen as the main cause for the high degree of malaria prevalence in West Africa (Alaba and Isaac, 2016). To tackle this issue of insufficient medical practitioners, many researchers have attempted the application of advancements in Information Technology to equalizing the ratio of patients to medical practitioners by developing expert systems that can personify the human experts in the field of diagnosis and therapy of malaria. With all these available medical expert systems, there is still an unquenched need in helping the equalization of the ratio most especially with the increase in the population of Africans and more so, the weaknesses in strength (accessibility, reasoning, cost, usability, codified expert knowledge) of some of these systems in addressing the issue as expected. Research shows that Nigeria is one of the most commonly affected countries in Africa, according to 2016 World Malaria report as shown in Fig. 1. The estimated malaria cases in Nigeria only is 55% while other west African countries have 45%. An Expert System (ES) is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to simulate the judgment and behavior of a human or an organization that has expert knowledge and experience in a particular field. It is an intelligent computer program that helps to systematize, store and obtain appropriate medical knowledge needed by the practitioner/doctors in dealing with each complicated case and suggesting suitable diagnosis for decision-making procedure. It would be of great necessity to provide a computerized system that will provide complementary medical service, like medical disease diagnosis in places that are difficult to access and health care facilities where qualified experts are lacking. This develops a system that will aid the diagnosis of malaria and typhoid fever.