Birth Complications
Mamas on Bedrest: LifeWrap May be Life Saving for Mamas all over the World!
January 23rd, 2012There is a new and potentially lifesaving device available for mamas called LifeWrap.
The LifeWrap (generic name: Non-pneumatic Anti-shock Garment or NASG) is a first-aid device used to stabilize women who are suffering from obstetric hemorrhage and shock. According to the LifeWrap website,
“The leading cause of maternal mortality (deaths from pregnancy and childbirth related complications) is obstetric hemorrhage in which a woman bleeds heavily, most often immediately after giving birth. A woman somewhere in the world dies every 4 minutes from this kind of complication.”
LifeWrap has been studied extensively by SuEllen Miller, CNM, Ph.D, professor at UCSF and the director of the Safe Motherhood Project at UCSF. As Miller shares with KGO TV in San Francisco,
“If they (women) bleed they’re (often) very far from skilled care. They need something to buy them time so they can get to the kind of facility where they can get a blood transfusion or get surgery and that’s what the anti-shock garment does. It (LifeWrap) buys time.”
The LifeWrap is made of neoprene and VelcroTM and looks like the lower half of a wetsuit cut into segments. The LifeWrap reverses shock by returning blood to the heart, lungs and brain. This restores the woman’s consciousness, pulse and blood pressure. Additionally, the LifeWrap decreases bleeding from the parts of the body compressed under it. Recent research has identified that the pressure applied by the LifeWrap serves to significantly increase the resistive index (i. e. increase the tone and help reduce free flow of blood) of the internal iliac artery (which is responsible for supplying the majority of blood flow to the uterus via the uterine arteries). Best of all, LifeWrap is a very low-tech device and can be applied by anyone after a short, simple training. It is very low cost, approximately $300 per suit, so it can be readily accessible by purchase or donation to countries and practices in need.
According to the Interview with KGO TV in San Francisco,
“The UCSF team is hoping to present results from its current clinical trial to the World Health Organization (WHO). If the LifeWrap is added to the organization’s approved medical device list, it would clear the way for donors to provide it to poorer countries, potentially saving thousands of lives.”
This is truly ground breaking news and research! It will be wonderful to live in a world where all mamas can safely give birth and actually live to see their babies.
An actual LifeWrap being used in Zambia. This image comes from the LifeWrap website.
Resources
KGO TV News Report with Carolyn Johnson
WikiPedia: The Non-Pneumatic anti-shock garment
Mamas on Bedrest: Priorities for Maternal and Child Health Identified
December 21st, 2011
Click to take the postpartum depression survey conducted by Case Western Reserve University http://filer.case.edu/~axp335/postpartdep.htm Thank you very much for your consideration.
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On the heels of the 20/20 special segment, “Giving Life: A Risky Proposition” World Health Organization (WHO) has released Essential Interventions, Commodities and Guidelines for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. This comprehensive document outlines the necessary steps and guidelines nations (developing low and mid income nations in particular) must adopt in order to further reduce maternal, infant and child mortality and to have a chance of reaching Millennium Development Goals .
Maternal, Infant and Child mortality is a global issue. According to the report,
Annually, 358,000 women die worldwide during pregnancy and childbirth. Approximately 7.6 million children die before the age of 5 years, and those in low-income countries are about 18 times more likely to die during that time than children in high-income countries. Under-5 mortality rates are highest in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.
Maternal, newborn, and under-5 mortality rates have declined in accordance with Millennium Development Goals 4 (reduce the under-5 mortality rate by two thirds between 1990 and 2015) and 5 (reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015). However, the improvements are not occurring quickly enough to reach the 2015 targets.
WHO and its partners The AGA Khan University (in Pakistan) and The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health performed a survey of more than 50,000 review papers to determine what steps are necessary to critically impact maternal, newborn and child health. Their goal was to identify key interventions that low and middle income countries can implement that are cost effective, will maximize resources and maximize the health and mortality of women, infants and children and thus help these countries reach worldwide millennium health and development goals. Their research has revealed some 56 key evidence-based interventions that when implemented, will have a significant impact on maternal, newborn and child health.
Rather than try and list all the interventions here, I refer you to their report, Essential Interventions, Commodities and Guidelines for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.
For each intervention, the authors indicated whether they recommend the intervention be delivered,
- Through the community or in the home-These health care workers are often community volunteers and/or influential outreach workers who have knowledge of the local community and are trusted by the community.
- Via healthcare professionals, outreach workers, or community health workers-Health care providers at this level are skilled professionals as well as outreach workers.
- In hospitals-Either local hospitals or regional referral hospitals that can provide higher levels of intervention and care.
The interventions were classified broadly as adolescents/prepregnancy, pregnancy, childbirth, postnatal (mother), postnatal (newborn), infancy and childhood, and cross-cutting community strategies.
Researchers believe that the recommendations in this report will help low and middle income countries’ health care workers best utilize their resources in an effort to reduce Maternal, Newborn and Child deaths. These guidelines will also help countries develop policies and regulations that will not only benefit women and children’s health, but also take into consideration the health care and policy environments of the countries so that all citizens will benefit.
Mamas on Bedrest: Giving Life: A Risky Proposition
December 17th, 2011
Wow, I just watched Diane Sawyer’s special on ABC’s 20/20, “Giving Life: A Risky Proposition”.
First and foremost, I am really glad to see mainstream media tackling such an important global issue. Diane Sawyer and her colleagues traveled around the world to some of the most impoverished countries and witnessed some of the most horrendous conditions under which the world’s women are giving birth (and losing life!). The statistics were often staggering and disheartening,
- Girls under 15 are 5 times more likely to die in childbirth (and in many developing countries, girls even younger are giving birth!)
- In developing countries, 20% of women will give birth with no medically trained attendant.
- 1 in 21 women die in childbirth in Sierra Leon, more than in any other country in the world.
- Peripartum hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal mortality. Misoprostol is critical to stop post partum hemorrhage and is in short supply to developing nations.
- The US ranks 50th in maternal mortality in the world. (This is the stat presented in the TV piece. “The US rank is 41st in maternal mortality” is what’s printed in the ABC News Press release.)
- Georgia has one of the highest rates if maternal mortality in the US.
- 2 women die in childbirth daily in the US. Rates are 4x higher for African American women in the US.
As one expert (sorry, I didn’t catch his name) said so eloquently,
“We have what it takes to save lives. The Question is will we decide to do it?”
I just had a similar conversation with , LM, CPM, founder and Executive Director of Common Sense Childbirth, The Birth Place, Easy Access Prenatal Clinics and creator of prenatal care “The JJ Way”. Jennie has put together an effective early access prenatal care program and is working tirelessly to bring it to women throughout central Florida, across the United States and globally where ever needed. As we talked about the issues affecting maternity care in the United States, we reached a similar conclusion; That low cost, low intervention, effective methods of delivering prenatal care are available. We have to decide as women and as a nation whether or not we are going to make the choice to make safe, accessible maternity care available to ALL women.
It really is a choice. While watching the 20/20 special, they showed a young obstetrician who had traveled to Sierra Leon and was desperately trying to help women in a nationally funded hospital that was so poorly equipped and so poorly staffed that she literally watched as a woman hemorrhaged post partum because there were so few tools available for her to intervene. Yet, there was a clinic staffed and supported by the women of Sierra Leon and there, women received supportive care and the outcomes at this locally supported clinic were far better than the outcomes for the nationally funded hospital.
In Bangladesh, maternal mortality was spiraling out of control. When skilled maternity workers realized that women were not coming to the hospitals and clinics erected, they started taking maternity services to women in their homes-the method used for centuries and the method of childbearing most familiar to the women. As a result, Bangladesh has dropped is maternal mortality rate 43%. In addition, birth workers in Bangladesh are using cell phones and an increasing rate and as a result, they are able to communicate with physicians and other workers as needed while still serving women in their most comfortable environment.
In Mexico, the government started a national campaign for contraception when birth rates and maternal and infant mortality were skyrocketing. Since implementing a contraceptive campaign and extolling the benefits of smaller families and fewer conceptions for women, Mexico has seen 76% of women using contraception. It must be noted that for all its benefit, contraception is still not widely accepted amongst men, and many still hold onto old notions of “Machismo” where the more children a man sires, the more manly he is! As a result, many women access contraception secretly in an effort to improve their opportunities in life, to have reproductive choice and to improve their overall health.
So what’s it going to be? Are we going to continue to wring our hands and lament the abysmal maternal and infant mortality numbers in this country or are we going to do something about it? Jennie Joseph is doing it. Shafia Monroe is doing it with her International Center for Traditional Childbearing.DONA International is doing it. Centering Healthcare is doing it. We can do it. Million Moms Challenge showed what can be done when we work collectively. When Johnson & Johnson pledged to donate $100,000 if the Million Moms Challenge gathered 100,000 supporters, they went to work, gathered the supporters and recouped the money. In fact, Million Moms raised more than $1.5 million dollars to support work that improves health of women, infants, children and communities.
It has been stated and shown, “We have what it takes to save lives.” The question now is, “Will we do it?”
Photo is courtesy of yfrog and printed with permission.
What will you do to improve maternal mortality in the US and abroad? What would you like to see done? Share your vision with us here, or send an e-mail to info@mamasonbedrest.com. We’re talking about it on Twitter, @mamasonbedrest, and will also take your comments on Facebook. To stay in the loop, be sure to subscribe to our blog via the RSS feed on the upper right hand corner of our pages.
