By Jenny Fox | Project Leader
When I began exploring midwifery in the late 1990s, I learned that the leading cause of maternal death was postpartum hemorrhage. As a student in Mercy in Action, I learned how to manage this complication. Today it remains the worldwide number one reason that mothers die. Innovations that directly address this complication are vital for saving lives. The non-pneumatic anti-shock garment is a low-tech, inexpensive intervention that is recommended by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and other global health entities. It is a compression suit made of neoprene that is applied to the legs in order to shunt blood from the lower extremities back to the vital organs. We have been using these in our birth centers for the past decade, with excellent results, saving lives and also improving recovery from blood loss.
Global health experts have developed a 2-day course that trains any provider attending births how to follow a series of protocols, including the NASG, when indicated, to effectively reduce maternal deaths from bleeding after birth. We know this course greatly improves outcomes, so we teach the Helping Mothers Survive Bleeding After Birth course on both sides of the ocean! I am teaching it in Virginia next month (there are still a few spots if you would like to attend, see the link below), and Rose will be teaching it in Michigan next spring! We encourage you to consider taking this workshop whenever you can!
As alumni of Mercy in Action, you have learned about these incredible devices, and we hope you are carrying the NASG to births, wherever you are in the world, as these can save lives at American home births or in other low-resource countries. We offer a free NASG CEU course (see the link below) if you need a refresher course in how to use it. We regularly give away NASG to midwives in other countries like the Philippines, where we have trained all our midwives to use it and teach it. We have trained our Filipina Mercy in Action midwives so they are Master Trainers in the Helping Mothers Survive: Bleeding After Birth Complete 2.0 and train others in their communities. We donate an NASG to each health facility that attends the workshop, and recently, I was in the Philippines helping donate NASGs to hospitals and midwifery colleges that had taken our training.
Implementing these protocols to prevent mortality and morbidity from postpartum hemorrhage in our own birth centers and in our communities is one way that Mercy in Action birth centers are saving lives! Your generosity makes this possible, so that we have the funding to conduct these workshops and also to purchase many NASGs and donate to workshop participants. Thank you for caring about the vulnerable and investing in the future of healthy mothers.
Kindly,
Jenny Fox, for the Mercy in Action Team
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