Simple steps can improve malaria prevention

Jul 15 2011

Megan Fotheringham, a public health adviser with the President's Malaria Initiative, describes in a post on USAID's "IMPACTblog" how a program in Kenya worked to improve the successful administration of malaria prevention therapy among pregnant women in the country's Gem District simply by sending to antenatal clinics a memo describing when to administer the treatment. "To reinforce their message, officials made half-day visits to all facilities providing antenatal care services in Gem. To support the importance of this simplified approach, the same memo was re-sent six months later," she writes. A year after the first memo was sent, the percentage of women receiving both doses of malaria prevention therapy increased from 7 percent to 43 percent, she notes (7/13).