Malaria in pregnancy

Most malaria deaths worldwide are in children under 5 years old and pregnant women.

While there has been a large amount of social science research on children and malaria, malaria in pregnancy has received little attention from social scientists, say researchers in a policy paper in PLoS Medicine.

Building on existing knowledge from social science research on malaria, Professor Umberto D'Alessandro (Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium) and colleagues propose two models for studying the social science aspects of malaria in pregnancy. One model considers social factors in malaria prevention, and the other in malaria treatment.