Abstract

Although a high proportion of pregnant women had an antenatal care (ANC) visit at least once during pregnancy, the coverage
level of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy (IPTp-SP) and insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) remains
low in Sub-Saharan Africa. A hospital-based descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out. The outcome of the survey
revealed that the majority of participants, 79%, were above 20 years old, with a mean (+/-SD) age of 25.6 (+/-SD) years. The
survey also revealed that 62.67% of the participants knew about IPTp; the biggest number of participants (86.67%) reported
utilizing IPTp during their current pregnancy, while 13.33% did not take IPTp. Occupation, gestational age, several ANC visits,
and information about IPTp were significantly associated with IPTp uptake. The current study explored malaria IPTp uptake
among pregnant women attending ANC at Bumanya HCIV. It established that an increased number of ANC visits, providing
IPTp information to pregnant women, and the gestational age of pregnancy resulted in increased uptake of IPTp and thus
reduced incidences of malaria cases.
Keywords: Pregnancy, Women, ANC, IPTp, Malaria, Gestational age.