Intermittent Preventive Treatment against malaria in pregnancy (IPTp) is a highly cost-effective intervention with the potential to save many maternal and neonatal lives. Yet its coverage is low. We require immediate action for dramatic scale-up of coverage in sub-Saharan Africa. While some obstacles to IPTp uptake relate to health-systems issues, many of the barriers, common across countries, could be overcome relatively easily and rapidly.

The purpose of the Malaria in Pregnancy Working Group (MiPWG) is to align RBM partners on best practices and lessons learned in MiP programming to help achieve higher coverage in MiP interventions globally.

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 Speed Up IPTp Scale-Up!

A global call to end malaria in pregnancy with intermittent preventive treatment.

April, 2020 marks the 5th year anniversary of the Call to Action, launched by the Roll Back Malaria – Malaria in Pregnancy Working Group (RBMMiPWG) in partnership with the World Health Organization, to increase intermittent preventive treatment during pregnancy (IPTp) among eligible pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding how far we have come and where we need to go to achieve our milestones is a cornerstone for success.  A series of Call to Action products and events will highlight the remaining steps that need to be taken to achieve optimal coverage of IPTp. Watch this site for information on future events.

 

Call to Action Resources can be found here.

Malaria in pregnancy contributes to 10,000 maternal deaths each year. It is also responsible for approximately 100,000 newborn deaths globally and 11% of newborn deaths and 20% of stillbirths in sub-Saharan Africa. While some countries across sub-Saharan Africa have made good progress towards increasing coverage of MiP interventions, the majority of countries are far from achieving target goals. The 2015, World Malaria Report revealed 52% of eligible pregnant women received at least one dose of IPTp-SP and 17% received 3 doses. According to a 2015 Global Call to Action seminar report, ITN use among pregnant women is 38 %. This indicates more needs to be done to increase the coverage of integrated, quality MiP programming and achieve better health outcomes for mothers and newborns.

The MiPWG’s diverse partnership, made up of Ministry of Health leaders from both national reproductive health programs and national malaria control programs, technical partners, researchers and donors positions the WG to uniquely bridge global policy to country practice to support acceleration of MiP program implementation.

Functions of the Working Group

1. Development of advocacy materials including briefs, consensus statements, and country support tools.

2. Fostering partnerships between national reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health and national malaria control partners.

3. Identification of critical strategic programmatic and policy barriers, as well as knowledge gaps, for reaching universal access by:

  • Outlining an operational research agenda to address the challenges of implementing MiP interventions.
  • Identifying strategies for addressing capacity gaps.
  • Identifying strategies for addressing issues with commodities.
  • The MiPWG will also assign responsibilities to WG members of partners for action.

4. Support existing MiP coordination mechanisms by synthesizing and disseminating country experiences and best practices related to scaling-up MiP interventions.

5. Identify linkages with research for effective implementation and policy development.

  • Disseminate outputs of research activities and routine country health information systems to guide policy.

6. Interface and share relevant information with other RBM mechanisms to ensure strategic harmonization in resource mobilization, implementation support and tracking progress (MAWG, MERG, HWG, PSMWG) to reach GMAP targets.