A few months ago, Nirmala Saud from Doti district gave birth to her baby boy through caesarean section delivery at the district hospital. After the delivery, the health of the 24-year-old mother started to deteriorate as she suffered from postpartum haemorrhage.
Doctors at the Doti hospital transfused four pints of blood, but her haemoglobin level remained critically low, which indicated continuous internal bleeding.
“We used anti-shock suits on the patient and referred her to Seti Provincial Hospital in Dhangadhi,” said Ganga Rana, a nurse at the Doti Hospital. “We managed to save the life of the new mother with the help of an anti-shock suit.”
The non-pneumatic anti-shock garment is a low-cost first-aid device that limits persistent postpartum bleeding. The technology applies external pressure to a woman’s lower body to drive the blood flow upwards.
Like in Doti, health workers serving in several remote districts use this device to prevent deaths from excessive bleeding.
Experts say the suit reduces blood flow to the uterus and treats hypovolemic shock, an emergency condition in which severe blood or other fluid loss makes the heart unable to pump enough blood to the body. The suit can keep a woman with postpartum bleeding alive for up to 48 hours. Without the suit, a woman may bleed out within 30 minutes. The device buys critical time to transfer a patient to a healthcare facility for treatment. It is also lightweight, washable and can be reused, officials said.
The device is already in use in many low- and middle-income countries of Africa and Asia, according to officials at the Ministry of Health and Population.
The ministry had provided a budget last fiscal year to equip health offices of 45 districts and all 20 federal hospitals with these suits.
“Every life matters, and the government is committed to avoiding every preventable maternal death,” said Nisha Joshi, a public health official at the Family Welfare Division under the Department of Health Services. “Health workers have used the anti-shock garments in many districts and prevented the worst outcomes.”
Excessive bleeding after childbirth, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia (pregnancy-related high blood pressure disorders) have been identified as some of the major causes of maternal deaths in Nepal. Likewise, prematurity (neonates born at less than 37 weeks' gestation), birth asphyxia (a condition in which a baby does not receive enough oxygen before, during, or directly after birth), and sepsis (organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection) are considered primary reasons for neonatal deaths.
Nepal has reduced maternal deaths by over 70 percent since 2000, according to a report by the World Health Organisation.
The UN health body, in its report, stated that currently 142 Nepali women die from maternity-related complications per 100,000 live births.
A previous study carried out by the National Statistics Office in 2021 had shown 151 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Similarly, neonatal mortality now stands at 16.6 per 1,000 live births, and the stillbirth rate has decreased to 13.5 per 1,000 births.
The SDGs, which follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aim to end poverty and hunger and all forms of inequality in the world by 2030, and Nepal has committed to meeting the goals.
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