Tanzania Wazazi Nipendeni Campaign

A national social and behavior change communication campaign for safe motherhood, launched in Tanzania in 2012 under the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare's Reproductive and Child Health Section, in collaboration with a wide range of partners and developed with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs, with funding support from the government of the United States through USAID. Wazazi Nipendeni, a Swahili phrase meaning Love me, parents, encourages pregnant women and their partners to take concrete steps toward a healthy pregnancy and a safe delivery, integrating messaging on antenatal care attendance, malaria prevention, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, individual birth planning and safe delivery, and it is built around a free SMS service that lets pregnant women and new mothers register by texting the word mtoto to receive a schedule of messages covering pregnancy and early childcare. An evaluation of the campaign's first phase found significant impact on antenatal care visit numbers, HIV testing uptake, use of insecticide-treated bed nets, receipt of antimalarial treatment during pregnancy, and individual birth planning.