SUCCESS STORIES

IPT Services Protect Ugandan Mothers

In the small village in northern Uganda, pregnant mothers walk the treacherous five miles to Unyama Health Center to receive their antenatal care (ANC). Most of the mothers are from nearby internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, where treacherous living conditions put more than 200,000 people at even greater danger to diseases like malaria.

Nancy, a mother of three who just delivered her baby Akello, has benefited from the services provided at the Unyama Health Center. “I received the IPT treatment at the health clinic to keep me from getting malaria while I was pregnant, and I didn’t get malaria.”

In Uganda, it is estimated that the prevalence of pregnant women with malaria is as high as 62% in some areas. However, it is well-known that intermittent preventive therapy (IPT) is an effective strategy in protecting expectant mothers from malaria. Pregnant women are more vulnerable to the disease, which is also linked to anemia, low birth weight, and even neonatal death.

UPHOLD (the Ugandan Programme for Human and Holistic Development) in partnership with the Ugandan Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) is supporting health centers such as Unyama in delivering protective health services to pregnant women during their ANC visits. Another integral part of the plan is to train health care workers to encourage women to make frequent visits to ANC clinics, to stymie myths regarding the danger of malaria medications during pregnancy and to effectively deliver IPT to women in need.

By taking two doses of sulfadoxine-pyrithmethamine (SP) or another approved drug after the first trimester of pregnancy, women are significantly protected from malaria. Therefore, providing malaria preventive therapy at all health facilities that offer antenatal care services is paramount. The PMI is supporting the NMCP and UPHOLD to scale up national coverage of IPT for pregnant women, including it as part of the focused antenatal care package (FANC).

According to the NMCP, the program has been successful in protecting expectant mothers from malaria, with 34% of Ugandan pregnant women attending ANC clinics received two doses of IPT in 2004, up from 10% in 2000. UPHOLD now aims to increase the proportion of pregnant women attending ANC who have completed two doses of IPT to 80% by 2010, which could positively impact the lives of millions of Ugandan women by protecting them against the deleterious effects of malaria.