TIPTOP launched in Mozambique

On September 11, Mozambique launched theTIPTOP project, funded by Unitaid and coordinated by Jhpiego and ISGlobal, in partnership with WHO and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV). The event took place in Maputo, with the Mozambican Minister of Health, Nazira Karimo Vali Abdula, and the Director of Public Health Rosa Marlene, who pointed out that malaria accounts for 13% of maternal deaths in Mozambique and remains the first cause of death among children under five years of age. Unitaid Executive Director, Lelio Marmora and representatives from ISGlobal, Jhpiego, the Manhiça Foundation and the WHO also participated in the event.

Antoni Plasència, director of ISGlobal, an institution supported by the la Caixa Foundation, says: “Fighting malaria is at the core of our work at ISGlobal and of our long-lasting partners in the Manhiça Health Research Centre (CISM), in Mozambique. TIPTOP’s learning-driven approach fits very well with our vision that links knowledge generation, development of capacities, action and impact on health. We look forward to working with all stakeholders to address the key obstacles for reaching millions of pregnant women deprived of a highly efficacious and cost-effective treatment such as IPTp”.

Through an innovative community-based approach, TIPTOP aims to bring intermittent preventive treatment for malaria (IPTp) to 400,000 pregnant women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique and Nigeria. It also seeks to generate scientific evidence to inform the WHO’s policy on IPTp. The project, whose first meeting took place in Madagascar last July, is implemented by Jhpiego, a NGO affiliated to the John Hopkins University, while ISGlobal leads the research and implementation evaluation activities.

Clara Menéndez, director of the Maternal, Child and Reproductive Health Initiative at ISGlobal and principal investigator of the project says: “TIPTOP is an opportunity to generate evidence that will help improve malaria prevention among African women”.

For Leslie Mancuso, President and CEO of Jhpiego, “the project goes beyond what we can do today, creating long-term scalable, sustainable impact across a generation, saving the lives of mothers and their babies.”