Saving Mothers' Lives in Rural Kenya

Summary

A low-cost, off-patent drug stops postpartum hemorrhage. Thousands of women's lives can be saved by making it available to traditional midwives through local businesses in developing countries.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

Each year, over twice as many women die in childbirth as people who died in the 2004 tsunami. 99% of these deaths are in developing countries and hemorrhage is the most common cause worldwide. Bleeding can be controlled in a clinic but we have shown that traditional midwives can use inexpensive misoprostol tablets to save lives in a woman’s home: where most births take place and most maternal deaths occur in the developing world--well beyond reach of hospitals and government health services.

How will this project solve this problem?

In 2004, we co-sponsored a successful policy meeting with the Kenyan government, at their request. Now we are preparing to work with manufacturers and to help with the regulatory process to make misoprostol available to save women’s lived.

Potential Long Term Impact

The project is uniquely scalable. Kenya been unable to lower maternal death to meet the U.N.'s 2015 goal of 75% reduction. With this drug, traditional midwives get their first effective technology and see the first major reduction in mortality.

Project Message

When we started training for the Tanzania project, word spread. Pregnant women who knew their lives were in danger traveled 70km when they heard that we had a drug to stop bleeding after childbirth.
- Dr. Ndola Prata, Advisor, Tanzania study with traditional midwives

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).

Resources