The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has promised $10.75 million to extend a ground-breaking UCSF project to help combat maternal mortality in Nigeria and India – two countries that comprise one-third of all maternal deaths worldwide.
MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton announced the grant in London at the Women Deliver conference.
The funding will go to the nongovernmental organization Pathfinder International, which will use the grant to implement a spectrum of interventions developed and tested by UCSF researchers to treat women suffering from post-partum hemorrhaging. UCSF will continue to advise the group on the roll-out, including development of a plan for monitoring and evaluating the project's outcomes.
The centerpiece of the program is the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment, or NASG, a low-cost and reusable body suit made of lightweight neoprene that was originally designed for battlefield use. When the suit's five Velcro closures are tightened around the patient's body, the compression stops blood from flowing to the lower extremities and forces it back to the heart, lungs, and brain to counteract shock.
The suit has now been shown to effectively stem hemorrhaging after childbirth, according to Suellen Miller, CNM, PhD, who proposed the garment's use as a maternal life-saver and pilot-tested the project in Egypt over the past four years with Egyptian colleagues Mohammed Mourad Yousiff, MD, from El Galaa Maternity Hospital, in Cairo; and Mohamed Fathalla, MD, from the Assiut Teaching Hospital, in Assiut.
"It is tremendously gratifying to see this work being expanded by Pathfinder,” said Miller, an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services and director of the Safe Motherhood Programs of the UCSF Women's Global Health Imperative.
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