Increasing Intermittent Preventive Treatment uptake through enhanced antenatal clinic service delivery to improve maternal and child health & assessing ANC data for routine monitoring in Mali

Objectives

The first primary objective is to determine whether access to antenatal services to pregnant women is increased by improving the capacity of community health centers (CSCOMs) to provide basic antenatal care (ANC) services and by delivering ANC services through outreach to women living further than 5 kilometers from a health facility. The study will help inform the Government on strategies for increasing ANC coverage among women more than 5 km from a health facility.

The second primary objective is to assess if pregnant women can serve as a sentinel population for monitoring malaria indicators including malaria prevalence. Pregnant women attending their first ANC visit are an ideal population given that a high proportion of pregnant women attend at least one visit. However, given that pregnant women represent only about 5% of the overall population, it is important to demonstrate that malaria prevalence and program performance indicators derived from ANC clients are representative of those in the general population.