New Approaches to Improve Coverage and Compliance of Antimalarial Treatment for Pregnant Women in Rural Africa

Each year, about 50 million women living in malaria endemic regions become pregnant, more than half in sub-Saharan Africa. In areas of relatively stable transmission, where acquired immunity to Plasmodium falciparum limits infection and prevents severe disease in adults, women in their first and second pregnancy are the most vulnerable subjects, due to a higher risk of severe anaemia and a low birth weight (LBW) outcome, a leading cause of child mortality and poor growth and development.

Malaria in pregnancy and its adverse consequences can be prevented with suppressive antimalarial treatment or chemoprophylaxis. Weekly chloroquine (CQ) had been the basis for prevention for many years, but its application became limited over time, partly because of difficulties in coverage and compliance throughout pregnancy and partly because of increased parasite resistance to CQ in endemic areas. A new strategy for prevention based on insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and use of intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy (IPTp) was thus formulated, with IPTp being based on the administration of treatment doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (1500/75 mg; SP) to all pregnant women at pre-defined intervals and regardless of malaria infection. WHO elaborated new recommendations, based on the administration of SP two or three times at scheduled antenatal visits at least one month apart from the second trimester onwards. Evidence of the efficacy of IPTp with SP for preventing malaria infection and improving birth weight was reported from East Africa and West Africa.

However, the IPTp strategy assumes that most pregnant women attend antenatal clinics (ANC) at least twice during their pregnancy and at a time when SP can be administered under direct observation. Unfortunately, it appeared soon that late attendance to ANC and weak health services limit the effectiveness of this strategy; coverage with two or more SP doses varied widely (24-68%) and was well behind the goal of 80% proposed by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. New approaches to increase IPTp coverage were urgently needed.

This study, conceived in 2002 and carried out between 2004 and 2006, had therefore two different components: on one side, it investigated whether promoting regular and early antenatal attendance of pregnant women through community based health education would increase coverage and uptake of IPTp; on the other side, it investigated the effectiveness of IPTp-SP compared with weekly CQ, in order to provide additional evidence to the Burkinabé Ministry of Health for an impending policy change.