News & Events

Rehema Ouko, Dr Nafissatou Dioubate, Aline Semaan

Dr Hadja Fatoumata Souare and Dr Pépé Kpogomou

From Sept 29 to Oct 2, part of our team in the Reproductive and Maternal Health unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, accompanied by our colleagues from the University of Lubumbashi's School of Public Health (ESP UNILU), UrbanMat Lubumbashi, and UrbanBirthCollective had the invaluable opportunity of participating in the European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health (ECTMIH 2025) in Hamburg, Germany.

October 7, 2025

Rehema Ouko (ITM Antwerp) and Nafissatou Dioubate (CEA-PCMT, Guinea) reflect on their visit to Lubumbashi

The importance of the DHS Program and imagining its future

The second stakeholder engagement meeting for the “Discontinu_Cities” project took place in Maferinyah on 31st January and 1st February 2025. The research team gathered with the technical advisory group to discuss and finalize the research protocol of the second work package.

A Viewpoint article published in the Journal of Global Health sets out the vision for our UrbanBirth Collective

It is always important to take into account the opinions of frontline healthcare providers: their participation in finding solutions is a success factor in removing bottlenecks in improving data quality within the healthcare system.

PhD candidate Catherine Birabwa published her study on pathways women take to emergency obstetric care in the capital of Uganda - Kampala

On 3 and 4 October 2024, teams from the African Centre of Excellence for the Prevention and Control of Communicable Diseases, the National Centre for Training and Research in Rural Health of Guinea, and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp presented the Discontinu_Cities project to stakeholders at the University of Conakry. The aim of these meetings was to engage key stakeholders in the health system at all levels of the project starting from its design, to ensure that their views and concerns are taken into account, and to ensure that the results of the various research activities will be used by decision-makers to influence policies and practices.

On October 17, 2024, team members from Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guinea gathered in Antwerp to officially launch the UrbanBirth Collective.

The ongoing research project UrbanMat in Lubumbashi, the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is mapping all health facilities that offer maternal and newborn healthcare. At a recent stakeholder meeting, health system managers and stakeholders provided input on preliminary versions of the maps.

PhD candidate Catherine Birabwa published her study on trends and factors influencing maternal mortality in the city of Kampala between 2016 and 2021

Analysis of mortality and maternal and fetal complications in maternity wards of three referral hospitals in Guinea

ITM researchers examined how nearly 20,000 women from 22 large African cities used maternal care.