Maternal and Child Health Programme

For the MAMAH project, 2019 was an important year that saw the recruitment of its first clinical trial participants in Gabon. This five-year project, funded by the EDCTP and coordinated by ISGlobal in collaboration with the Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL, Gabon), the Manhiça Health Research Centre (CISM, Mozambique), the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Wien, Austria), the Bernhard-Nocht Institut für Tropenmedizin (BNITM, Germany), and the Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen (EKUT, Germany), will provide conclusive evidence to reduce the burden of two of the most important poverty-related diseases in a particularly vulnerable population: HIV-infected pregnant women exposed to malaria (1). Regarding TIPTOP, a Unitaid-funded project aimed at upscaling preventive malaria treatment during pregnancy, we successfully completed all scheduled household surveys in the four participating countries (DRC, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria) and collected in-depth information to interpret the survey results. Meetings with Ministries of Health and other partners were held in all project countries to share ongoing results (2).

Programme researchers working on cervical cancer described a rare form of HPV-negative tumours that have worse prognosis (3). Regarding child mortality, our researchers collaborated on a series of methodological articles on CHAMPS, a global surveillance network that uses a minimally invasive autopsy developed by ISGlobal to determine causes of death in children under five years of age (4).