BOSIRE: Home-grown innovations ease burden of ill health

Immaculate Otieno demonstrates how a uterine balloon tamponade (UBT) kit works at the Kisumu Medical and Education Trust offices on March 16, 2018. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

Zacharia Kimengich, a plaster technologist, has worked at the Kenyatta National Referral Hospital for 15 years, caring for patients with fractures.

During this time, he has been using a Spica table to position patients with fractures of the lower limb appropriately for the plaster cast to be fitted painlessly and in the correct position.

However, when it came to children, the almost archaic Spica table provided just wouldn't cut it, and it got Zach, as he is popularly known, thinking of solutions. He browsed online for hours searching for options, but they were too expensive.

Knowing that it would be a tall order to get his department to procure a modern Spica table, Zach decided to make one. Moving his idea from paper to reality did not come easy.

Selecting the right material, designing the right balance, mechanism and size, was tough. He spent thousands of shillings to get a local manufacturer to make the first paediatric hip Spica table.

His efforts and dedication finally paid off, and this earned him a place in the Leaders in Innovation Fellowship Programme hosted in London in February, by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The unassuming young man rubbed shoulders with innovators from around the globe and a host of investors who were willing to put their money in their innovations.

Today, even as he struggles to market his invention, he can proudly say that his work is so much easier and his little patients are taken care of much better. His heart is at peace.

Has Zach earned a state commendation for his good work? Not at all. He is celebrated away from home, yet his colleagues in the medical field at home have not heard of his innovation.

HOME-GROWN SOLUTIONS

In resource-constrained settings, solutions available in developed countries are often out of reach due to cost. This shortfall results in home-grown solutions that respond to our needs.

The B-Lynch technique for instance, was introduced by Prof Christopher Balogun-Lynch, who was born in Sierra Leone.

He came up with the lifesaving procedure in 1997, and it is now almost routinely practised by obstetricians across the globe to prevent mothers from dying from post-partum haemorrhage (excessive bleeding after birth).

It involves compressing the mother’s uterus to keep it from bleeding out, and it saves many women from death.

Several other technologies exist across the world to help prevent post-partum haemorrhage using a tamponade inside the uterus, but they are generally too costly to be locally available. This led to improvisation to make the technology cheaper and more accessible to women who need the intervention.

SAVING LIFE

In countries like Kenya, the condom balloon tamponade is taking root as a solution for post-partum haemorrhage. It involves tying a condom to a pipe and inserting it into the uterus, then running sterile fluid through the pipe into the condom to inflate it inside the bleeding uterus, to force the blood vessels to be sealed off by the pressure. That’s all it takes to save a life.

Kangaroo mother care is another innovation that was born from resource-constrained settings where incubators are scarce. It keeps premature newborns warm in the place of an incubator.

In Bogota, Columbia, mothers were encouraged to keep their babies warm by putting them in skin to skin contact, wrapped together in warm cloth. This resulted from a shortage of incubators due to their prohibitive cost.

Today, kangaroo mother care is practised worldwide and has massively contributed to reduction in infant mortality.

Our very own Christine Sammy, a Kitui-based nurse, won the 2013 International Neonatal Nursing Excellence Award for her role in reducing neonatal deaths in her hospital, from more than 50 per cent to below 10 per cent in just three years. Her main intervention was championing kangaroo mother care in the hospital's newborn unit.

As we strive to save lives within the context of limited resources, we are faced with the daily challenge of coming up with inexpensive, sustainable medical products and techniques that work for us.

We must encourage our health professionals who continue to take this challenge head on, to ease the burden of ill health among our people.