When pregnant women meet with Midwife Edith Asare for prenatal care or child welfare sessions, they often leave having pledged to sleep under an insecticide-treated net every night and become champions of net use in their communities. Edith works at the Swedru Hospital in Ghana’s Central Region. She has seen many cases of malaria, especially among women and young children who are most vulnerable to the disease.
In 2020, over 75 percent of all malaria deaths globally occurred in children under five, so it is crucial that families use malaria prevention tools such as insecticide-treated nets. The nets physically block mosquitoes at night, when they are most likely to bite, and kill mosquitoes that land on them.
Ghana’s National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) distributes insecticide-treated nets, yet the country’s 2019 malaria indicator survey showed that nearly one in four people who received a net—24 percent—were not using them. Edith is trying to change that.
“We give out nets as part of our routine antenatal care. But pregnant women were complaining that when they sleep under it, they feel very hot,” shared Edith, adding, “most of them were not using the net.”
Edith responds to the women’s complaints by using radio recordings and videos that highlight the benefits of net use and underscore the risks of complications for pregnant women when they contract malaria. With this approach, the women come to see how proper use of a net when sleeping at night can help protect them and their children from malaria.
Midwife Edith Asare with pregnant women during a routine antenatal clinic. Photo Credit: Mary Christiana Kwasin
She also teaches pregnant women and caregivers how to take care of the nets and avoid damaging them, and highlights the cost effectiveness of using nets compared to other tools favored by community members, such as mosquito coils.
Edith has become a strong advocate of insecticide-treated net use over the past two years after attending a workshop in November 2020, organized by the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) VectorLink Ghana, Ghana’s NMCP, the Central Regional Health Directorate, and local nonprofit Total Family Health Organization. She was one of 175 midwives and community health nurses from 114 health facilities trained on how to champion use of insecticide-treated nets and promote effective use and care of the nets among pregnant women, caregivers of children under five, and the entire community.
Since the first workshop, PMI VectorLink has continued to work with the Total Family Health Organization and the Eastern and Central Regional Health Directorates to scale up implementation to another 40 districts. They have trained more than 2,400 net use and care champions from around 1,350 health facilities. In addition, the project trained 4,380 community health management team members to ensure they are engaged in the planning and implementation of net use promotion activities.
In total, PMI and its partners have reached more than 18,100 pregnant women in Ghana with potentially life-saving messages about protecting themselves with nets.
“This intervention is a very positive one,” said Edith. “It should be part of our approach to continuously educate pregnant women to use insecticide-treated nets to protect themselves and their unborn babies. I’ll always promote net use.”