Maternal health
Changing Policy and Practice
Heart problems are a significant cause of maternal death worldwide. In India, it's estimated that 2 in 1,000 pregnant and postpartum women experience heart failure. And of these cases, 40% are fatal.
Dr Manisha Nair is using our Changing Policy and Practice funding to address this issue in Asia and Africa. Echocardiography is a type of ultrasound scan used to look at the heart and its surrounding blood vessels. Echocardiograms have the potential to save lives by enabling prompt diagnoses. As a potential solution to this, Professor Nair's team developed a method for imaging for use by obstetricians called 'MaatHRI FoCUS', which stands for 'Maternal and perinatal Health Research collaboration, India - Focused Cardiac Ultrasound'. The team trained obstetricians to take images of the hearts of pregnant women with low-cost, portable, bedside ultrasound machines. These images were then reviewed remotely by experts. They found that this method successfully helped to detect heart problems in pregnant women. The resources and tools have been made freely available at https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/maathri/capacity-building/maathri-focus-for-obstetric-settings. The research team plan to develop an interactive training resource in collaboration with clinicians from Asia and Africa. The resource will enable obstetricians and cardiologists to use MaatHRI FoCUS. Dr Nair and her team will also create an action plan for reaching out to doctors and hospitals in low-resource settings where echocardiography facilities are not readily available. In settings like these, MaatHRI FoCUS would facilitate screening and referral by obstetricians to save lives by reducing the need for on-site presence of costly echocardiography machines and cardiologists. |