Today is World Malaria Day! The theme for this year’s World Malaria Day is “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria.”
A recent report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed that deaths from malaria are declining, but the report also showed that malaria deaths among adults have been enormously under-reported.
The number of pregnant women dying from malaria is also largely under-reported. Malaria prevention, screening, and treatment among pregnant women remains low, despite clear evidence of effective interventions.
Recently, the issue of malaria in pregnancy has been garnering more attention by the global public health and development communities. Experts are exploring ways to integrate care and reach pregnant women with prevention, screening, and treatment efforts.
In fact, a recent meeting in Rwanda, organized by Roll Back Malaria, gathered malaria and reproductive health experts to discuss progress and challenges in addressing malaria among pregnant women in seven high burden countries.
In honor of World Malaria Day, the Maternal Health Task Force shares with you ten essential resources for addressing malaria among pregnant women.
1.) Global Health e-Learning Center—Course on Malaria (with a section on malaria in pregnancy)
The Global Health eLearning Center was developed by the USAID Bureau of Global Health in response to requests from field staff for access to technical public health information. The course on malaria provides basic knowledge about the burden of malaria, the effective tools to treat and prevent malaria, and the challenges and opportunities for scaling up efforts. The malaria course has a specific section focused on understanding malaria in pregnancy.
Twitter: @USAID
2.) Malaria Journal
Malaria Journal is a peer-reviewed scientific journal focused exclusively on malaria. All articles published by Malaria Journal are open-access—freely accessible online without subscription charges or registration barriers. By entering “malaria in pregnancy” into the search box, you find numerous articles relating to the issue.
Twitter: @BioMedCentral
3.) Malaria Matters Blog—Malaria in Pregnancy section
Bill Brieger is currently a Professor in the Health Systems Program of the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins University as well as the Senior Malaria Adviser for JHPIEGO. His blog, Malaria Matters, provides regular updates on news, research, and stories from the field relating to malaria. By clicking on the Malaria in Pregnancy category on the blog, you will find numerous posts about recent challenges and successes in preventing, treating, and tracking malaria among pregnant women.
Twitter: @bbbrieger
4.) Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium—Tools and Links section of the site
The MiP Consortium is an initiative focused around four key areas of malaria in pregnancy: prevention, treatment, burden assessment, and how best to scale up existing strategies and interventions. The Consortium is made up of expert organizations from all over the world—including the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Barcelona Centre for International Health Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, Fundaçao Tropical do Amazonas, and others.
The Tools and Links section of the site is packed with links to organizations, coalitions, resources, and toolkits focused specifically on the issue of malaria in pregnancy.
5.) The Malaria in Pregnancy Library
The Malaria in Pregnancy (MiP) Library is a regularly updated database of published and unpublished literature relating specifically to malaria in pregnancy. The library also includes a trial registry of planned and ongoing studies relating to malaria in pregnancy. The library is a project of the Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium and aims to serve scientists, policy makers, funding agencies, and others working to address malaria among pregnant women.
6.) Malaria in Pregnancy Resource Package
JHPIEGO’s Malaria in Pregnancy resource package provides training resources, programming resources, and reference materials to guide the implementation of programs to reduce malaria in pregnancy. The resource package was designed for policymakers, public health professionals, and managers.
Twitter: @Jhpiego
7.) Malaria in Pregnancy Working Group Toolkit
Roll Back Malaria’s Malaria in Pregnancy Working Group (MPWG) meets regularly to develop strategic advice on best practices for scaling up interventions for the prevention and control of malaria during pregnancy. The group also works to foster collaboration between malaria and reproductive health partners at the country level.
The working group’s toolkit on malaria in pregnancy includes documents by numerous partners including UNICEF, the World Bank, WHO, UNFPA, Roll Back Malaria, DFID, PSI, USAID, and others.
Twitter: @RollBackMalaria
8.) The President’s Malaria Initiative—Technical Areas section of the site
The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) is a five-year, $1.2 billion expansion of U.S. Government resources aimed at reducing malaria-related deaths in 19 countries in Africa and the Greater Mekong sub-region in Asia. The project focuses on the most vulnerable populations: pregnant women and children under five years of age.
The Technical Areas section of the PMI site provides resources for several technical areas relating to malaria in pregnancy—including indoor residual spraying, insecticide treated nets, diagnosis and treatment, social mobilization, monitoring and evaluation, and pesticide management.
9.) Rapid Assessment of the Burden of Malaria during Pregnancy: A Toolkit
CDC’s Rapid Assessment Toolkit is designed to help countries to assess the burden of malaria during pregnancy, develop a policy or program, and to evaluate impact. The toolkit provides most of the materials needed to conduct a rapid assessment including general guidance about planning and conducting a rapid assessment and sample assessment instruments.
Twitter: @CDCGlobal
10.) Successes and Challenges for Malaria in Pregnancy Programming: A Three-Country Analysis
MCHIP’s analysis of malaria in pregnancy programming successes and challenges in Zambia, Senegal and Malawi resulted in three comprehensive country case studies. The case studies aim to highlight best practices and successful strategies that can be applied to other malaria-endemic countries throughout Africa.
Twitter: @mchipnet
A “Kangaroo Care Champion” in Brazil
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 by KateMitchWritten by Gary Darmstadt and Wendy Prosser
This post was originally posted on Impatient Optimists and is reposted here with permission.
The Ministry of Health in Brazil has taken enormous strides to improve maternal and newborn health and adopt a humanized care approach for moms and newborns. They adopted “Kangaroo Care,” also called skin-to-skin contact, the practice of holding a baby close to the skin, as a national policy for low birth weight babies over a decade ago.
And there is one woman in the country who could be called the “Kangaroo Care Champion.”
Brazil’s own Dr. Zeni Carvalho Lamy has engaged in long-term research on this type of care, which demonstrates the extraordinary benefits for newborns—and their parents. Her research has been invaluable to the larger push to get Kangaroo Care adopted worldwide.
Dr. Lamy is working in a variety of ways to improve the chance that small babies have to survive. Though Gary Darmstadt, one of the writers of this post, has written several posts about this deceptively simple practice, Dr. Zeni Carvalho Lamy and her research on this life-saving method inspired him to write another.
A mom with her Kangaroo Care baby at the University Hospital of Federal Maranhão, in Brazil.
Skin-to-skin care has been shown to have incredible benefits. In addition to the fact that it promotes breastfeeding, normalizes the baby’s temperature, increases weight gain, reduces the incidence of infections, and facilitates bonding between baby and parents, Dr. Lamy’s own study at the University Hospital of Federal Maranhão confirms that skin-to-skin care actually reduces pain responses for the newborn.
It’s a force of nature that can save lives.
In fact, Kangaroo care is proven to be one of the most effective means we have to save the lives of preterm (premature) infants.
Kangaroo Care began as an ideal method for low-resource (poor) regions of the world, where technological advances such as incubators, the typical method of treating preterm infants, aren’t available. But what Brazil is showing is that this simple, basic method of care is for all babies—those in the best neonatal intensive care unit available as well as those who may not even have had access to a midwife during delivery.
The University Hospital where Dr. Lamy is based teaches moms and dads how to provide skin-to-skin contact for as much time during the day as possible.
Kangaroo Care allows for the mother and baby to reconnect after an often alarming preterm delivery. Practicing Kangaroo Care while still in the hospital also gives parents a chance to overcome their reservations and fears of caring for a preterm baby while having constant support from health care workers.
Once released from the hospital, parents have more confidence in caring for their child. As a result, these mothers are more likely to exclusively breastfeed (feeding the newborn nothing but breast milk for the first six months of an infant’s life) and are more able to recognize and respond to their baby’s needs.
Seven-year-old former KC babies, celebrating life. The t-shirt says, “I was a Kangaroo Baby.”
For the first several weeks at home, frontline health workers, community health providers including peer counselors, skilled birth attendants, and others, conduct a weekly home visit until the baby reaches an acceptable weight. Routine follow-up for both preterm and full-term babies, including support for the practice of Kangaroo Care, also continues at health care clinics.
The hospital follows-up with these low birth weight babies through the years, until their seventh-year birthday party. Each year, the nurses and doctors get to celebrate with these children and their parents, celebrating both their birthdays, and the enormous benefits of a simple practice that helped them survive the first perilous days and weeks of life.
Kangaroo Care has been adopted across Brazil for preterm and low birth weight babies, thanks in large part to Dr. Zeni Lamy’s amazing research on the practice. It can and should be adopted by all parents all around the world. The benefits are enormous. Every baby deserves a seventh-year birthday celebration.
Interested in learning more about Kangaroo Care and what you can do to help spread the word and raise awareness? In December 2011, the first Kangaroo Care Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean was hosted by USAID. The United States was there as well. Information was shared with the goal to learn about and connect across borders to promote Kangaroo Care as a life-saving tool. Read up about this amazing practice on Impatient Optimists, or on the Healthy Newborn Network. Read the stories of families who have adopted this practice, watch this video, and spread the word about the benefits. And if you have a story to share, please do so in the comments.
Continue the conversation on Twitter with Gary Darmstadt (@gdarmsta), MCHIP (@mchipnet), the Healthy Newborn Network (@HealthyNewborns), Unicef (@UNICEF), and the MHTF (@MHTF).
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Tags: Brazil, Dr. Zeni Carvalho Lamy, frontline health workers, Gary Darmstadt, Healthy Newborn Network, Impatient Optimists, Kangaroo Care, Kangaroo Care Conference for Latin American and the Caribbean, low birth weight, MCHIP, UNICEF, University Hospital of Federal Maranhão, USAID, Wendy Prosser
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