Prevent Nigerian Mothers from Dying in Childbirth

The kanga is a rectangular garment of uniform dimensions but the colors are varied and always bright. They are purchased in pairs and worn as garments, head coverings, and baby carriers and used also for many other purposes. There is even a little paperback African book called “100 Ways to Use a Kanga”! For our study the TBAs and our technical advice team from Berkeley invented a systematic way to use these to estimate blood loss to know when hemorrhage was occurring.

We were thrilled to be working with these strong, resourceful women who have delivered many, many babies on mats on the floors of their villages’ homes for years. They explained that they were relieved to have, at last, a technology that could make a difference when a woman started to bleed too much. In the past, there was very little they could do about it and death was common.

This young woman was the first mother in our study in Tanzania whose post-partum hemorrhage was stopped by the misoprostol administered by a TBA.

In February 2007, Venture Strategies hosted two widely attended one-day trainings for local health professionals on the active management of third stage labor and misoprostol administration. Additional trainings are scheduled for Abuja and Port Harcourt.