Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium

Each year up to 125 million pregnancies occur in malaria endemic countries. Malaria infection during pregnancy can result in pregnancy loss, maternal death, severe maternal anaemia and low infant birth weight which increases the risk of death. It is associated with as many as 100,000 children dying needlessly every year. 

The Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium (MiP) works across 47 institutions worldwide, using standardized methods and sharing research data and information across the consortium.

The Consortium develops projects within four key research areas:

• Burden - Obtain a better understanding of the burden of malaria in pregnancy in regions outside Africa where malaria is common but less is known than for Africa;
• Treatment - Further evaluate which of the new generation of antimalarial drugs can be used safely and effectively for the treatment of pregnant women with malaria in Africa, Asia and Latin America;
• Prevention - Identify safe alternative antimalarials for the prevention of malaria in pregnancy in Africa to replace the commonly used antimalarial drug sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine – a treatment which many malaria parasites have developed resistance to;
• Health impact - Establish the best way to increase the coverage and utilisation of existing strategies to control malaria in pregnancy.

The MiP Consortium has partnered with WWARN to create a MiP Scientific Group. This partnership is enabling the pooled analysis of multiple MiP data sets to support the creation of evidence-driven policies and programmes. The collaboration is tracking the severity and spread of antimalarial drug resistance and developing a better understanding of the impact of resistance on the effectiveness of current prevention strategies during pregnancy. Discover the full scope of MiP Scientific Group activities.

The Malaria in Pregnancy online library
The Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium has developed the most comprehensive and reliable database of literature on malaria in pregnancy available to help simplify our understanding of malaria in pregnancy and highlight the gaps in our knowledge. The Library is coordinated by the MiP Consortium’s Secretariat at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) in the UK, and was developed with contributions from many malaria in pregnancy experts around the globe and from the Effective Health Care Research Programme Consortium at LSTM. The MiP library will eventually be migrated onto the WWARN website.