The Woman Trials

One woman every six minutes will die from heavy bleeding after giving birth. Within 24 hours of childbirth, there is usually some bleeding, however heavy bleeding after childbirth (known as postpartum haemorrhage – PPH) kills a woman every six minutes. This makes it the leading cause of maternal mortality. Researchers have recently discovered a treatment for this, and the hope is that it will significantly reduce maternal deaths by connected to PPH. 

We had the opportunity to discuss The WOMAN Trials which have made these recent discoveries with Researcher Eni Balogun from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The terrible condition affects 14 million women a year and causes the death of 70,000 annually. The condition hits hardest in low-income and medium-income countries, especially Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. “I think it’s something like one in every six minutes there’s a woman who is suffering from PPH and potentially dying,” said Eni Balogun, in an interview with YJA. 

Dr Pascale Allotey said that “Postpartum haemorrhage is scary, not always predictable, but absolutely treatable. Nonetheless, its impacts around the world are tragic.” This shows the desperation for a large distribution of medical care to prevent as much tragedy as possible.

The largest problem with the condition is its ability to stay hidden. Due to commonality of using visual checks to look for it, it can be unknown to doctors until it is irreversible. This can be changed with introduction of new testing equipment, but this is tough. Other treatment aside from the new discovery are often ineffective. The drug is often in the hospital, but the doctors can’t access it and they don’t know why: “We’re looking closely at what prevents the drug from being available at the time when the doctor might want to give it.” 

The drug, called Tranexamic Acid, was initially discovered in the 1960s but was used for almost everything with bleeding apart from PPH. The team at The University of London discovered the effectiveness of the drug as a treatment for PPH in 2017 and Eni went on to explain “now we are looking to see if it can be used to prevent PPH in anaemic women. Usually, it is given as an intravenous injection in hospital however, most women that die from PPH give birth outside hospital, so we are also looking at new ways of giving Tranexamic Acid.”

The drug is extremely cheap, only £2.40 at a local pharmacy. “So we’re working to see whether there’s a way where people who are not qualified doctors or midwives can give Tranexamic Acid where it is needed to give an injection, like what happened during covid.” 

There are other treatments for PPH, and tranexamic acid needs to be used alongside these other treatments. The research could save the lives of millions and will be the future of PPH death prevention. 

For more information about The Woman Trials please watch our interview with Eni below.

Max and Austin, Yr8 

Sleaford Carre’s Grammar School