Maternal health: the tech saving mothers in sub-Saharan Africa

Thousands of mothers die in sub-Saharan Africa every year with demand for blood outstripping supply. Global Japan looks at how a Japanese medical tech company is working to change that.

Giving birth to a third child last year almost cost Lilian her life. After undergoing a caesarian section in Nandi County in Kenya, where she lives, she suffered a postpartum haemorrhage and needed a life-saving transfusion.

“When the doctor arrived and started attending to me, my entire body felt a sudden chill. My whole body went cold. After about 30 minutes, I started regaining my energy. If that blood (from donors) hadn’t been available at the hospital, my newborn daughter would have grown (up) without a mother,” Lilian told Euronews.

While Lilian survived, every day more than 800 women die during pregnancy and childbirth around the world. Many of the causes are preventable. Two-thirds of those maternal deaths happen in Sub-Saharan Africa and up to nearly half of them are down to severe bleeding with demand for blood outstripping supply.

Philana Mugyenyi is from Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies, part of Japan’s Terumo Group. It provides technology and software in Africa for collecting and preparing blood and cells for treatments.

When we meet her, Philana is donating blood platelets via automated Terumo BCT technology. Before it arrived, up to six donors were needed to generate one unit for a patient. Now a single donor is enough.

“In Africa, we don’t yet have a culture of donating blood, and this is for many reasons. Some of them are cultural, some are lack of awareness,” Philana explains.

According to Terumo BCT research, more than 16,000 mothers' lives could be saved each year in Kenya, Ghana and Ivory Coast. That’s if enough blood was