New drug offers hope for reducing maternal mortality in Kenya
New drug offers hope for reducing maternal mortality in Kenya
Post-partum hemorrhage accounts for over 40% of maternal deaths in Kenya.
But in a Makueni County hospital, a new treatment protocol is making a clear difference.
Having soaked up great quantities of advice from friends who had given birth before, Gladys Musenya, 23, could envision the sequence of her delivery.
First, she would get a wave of contractions that would vary in intensity. Then she would push out her baby girl. Everything, she imagined, would fall effortlessly into place.
But her delivery in August did not follow this anticipated chronology of events.
Minutes after she gave birth, having fought through unimaginable pain during labor, she was in the operating theatre fighting for her life.
“One minute, I was in the delivery room. The next, I was in the theatre in a complete daze.
Up to now, I cannot account for the hours that followed after my baby girl was born,” said Musenya, a resident of Makueni County in southern Kenya.
Musenya had developed a postpartum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide.
Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is conventionally defined as a blood loss of 500 ml or more within 24 hours of birth, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In Kenya, PPH accounts for over 40 % of maternal deaths.
Lilian Mumbua, a midwife nurse at Makueni Referral Hospital who attended to Musenya, explains to VaccinesWork that the baby’s large weight and shoulder dystocia – a condition that happens when one or both of your baby’s shoulders get stuck during vaginal delivery – caused a cervical tear that led to bleeding.
“Her condition was life-threatening, and had the team in the labor ward not stepped in with the latest set of PPH interventions, then things would have gone sideways,” she said, her voice trailing off at the thought.
In January 2024, Makueni Referral Hospital adopted the use of heat-stable carbetocin, a WHO-recommended drug for postpartum hemorrhage.
“We have noticed a decrease in severe postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) cases since we started using carbetocin.
For example, even though Musenya experienced bleeding after receiving carbetocin, the amount of blood lost was significantly lower, and she did not need a transfusion,” explained Mumbua, who has witnessed many PPH cases in the maternity ward over the years.
New drug offers hope for reducing maternal mortality in Kenya
