Husaina Balarabe was holding her newborn son in a hospital in Kano, northern Nigeria, just hours after a postpartum hemorrhage had put her life at risk. The 26-year-old optometrist survived after her midwife used a low-cost device known as a maternal drape to identify the bleeding quickly.
The drape is a thin plastic sheet placed beneath a woman during delivery, with a pouch that hangs over the edge of the bed to collect blood. In Balarabe’s case, the midwife saw that the blood in the pouch had reached and passed the marked danger level of 300 milliliters, or about 10 ounces.
Postpartum hemorrhage is a leading cause of maternal death worldwide. The article describes the drape as a simple intervention developed in maternity wards in some of Africa’s poorest communities and now being used to help save lives across the continent.
Sources: The New York Times World.