From the Frontlines: Nigeria
Uduak Imo Bob (left) is a volunteer community health worker, helping to prevent malaria among women and children in her home state of Akwa Ibom in Nigeria. She is working with a Malaria in Pregnancy program that was introduced by Jhpiego and funded by ExxonMobil. Credit: Jhpiego
When word went out for volunteers to help prevent malaria in her home state of Akwa Ibom in Nigeria, Uduak Imo Bob responded to the call. How could she not? For years, she worked as a traditional birth attendant for a church group, delivering babies in the community of Atiamkpat in southeastern Nigeria. She had witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of malaria on pregnant women. Death was not uncommon in the women she knew who had acquired the mosquito-borne disease. She, too, had become ill with the fevers and headaches—but survived.
The malaria in pregnancy program introduced by Jhpiego and funded by ExxonMobil offered Uduak a chance to keep others safe. She signed up with 38 other women to serve as a CDD (community-directed distributor) in the villages surrounding the Atiamkpat Clinic, providing malaria prevention services and treatment.
With Jhpiego’s support, Uduak learned the skills and protocols to deliver malaria in pregnancy services to women, including distributing insecticide-treated bed nets and administering intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy. She is part of a frontline network of volunteers and health care providers who deliver services from home to health facility in the Onna local government area and help direct community malaria-fighting projects. Uduak and her CDD colleagues have provided malaria prevention and treatment services to 12,106 pregnant women.