Community &IPTp Bill Brieger | 03 Nov 2014 07:55 am
Prevention of Malaria in Pregnancy with Community Health Volunteers in Kenya: Jhpiego at ASTMH
Augustine M. Ngindu of Jhpiego’s USAID-MCHIP Project in Nairobi, Kenya will present a poster entitled, “Prevention of Malaria in Pregnancy: Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) promote community-based activities to increase uptake of Intermittent Preventive Treatment of malaria in pregnancy (IPTp) in Kenya,” at the ASTMH Annual Meeting at noon on Monday 3 October. Below is the abstract – stop by the session to learn more.
Malaria in pregnancy is associated with poor pregnancy outcomes including maternal anaemia, miscarriages and intrauterine growth retardation. In an effort to increase IPTp coverage, Kenya is implementing the community strategy by using community health volunteers (CHVs) to promote community-based activities to increase uptake of malaria in pregnancy interventions (MIP).
The CHVs visit each household every month to register new pregnant women, collect data from existing pregnant women including last IPTp dose taken and gestation, sensitize them to continue ANC visits and refer late starters and defaulters of scheduled ANC visits.
In Bungoma sub-county with a catchment population of 169,000, 382 CHVs from 14 community units identified a total of 4,925 (95%) out of an expected 5,092 pregnant women and followed them up between February to April 2014.
In Kenya the recommended time for starting IPTp is from weeks of pregnancy or after quickening.
Results showed that among the registered pregnant women 92% had taken at least IPTp1 and 61% IPTp2 doses respectively. IPTp doses taken by weeks of pregnancy showed that 1.3% had accessed IPTp by 16 weeks of pregnancy, 8.6% between 16-20 weeks, 4.7% between 21-25 weeks, 5.7% between 26-30 weeks, 6.5% between 31-35 weeks and 3.7 % between 36-40 weeks.
However, 1.5% had not started IPTp at 40 weeks of pregnancy. The data further showed that among those who started IPTp early 1% completed 7 IPTp doses at 40 weeks of pregnancy.
CHVs can be used to effectively promote community-based activities including collection of data on the number of IPTp doses taken during pregnancy, which is a good indicator of the proportion of pregnant women protected against the adverse effects of malaria during pregnancy. This practice if scaled up can serve as an alternative method of monitoring coverage rates of interventions without waiting for the 3-5 year community survey data