Mother and Infant Health in Remote Areas, The Impact of Portable Ultrasound Devices

The numbers are truly staggering. The World Health Organization reports: 

● Every day in 2017, approximately 810 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, nearly 295,000 women in just one year.

● Ninety-four percent of those deaths occurred in low-resource settings and most could have been prevented. 

● Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounted for about two-thirds of maternal deaths.

Sub-Saharan Africa also had the highest neonatal (infant) mortality rates in 2018 at 28 deaths per 1,000 live births. 

There are a lot of complicated reasons why pregnancy and the beginning of life are so precarious in remote areas. And there’s no single broad stroke answer for any of these truly disheartening numbers. But there are some devices and technologies that are helping.  

In the United States, there’s no question that most pregnant women will receive an ultrasound – often more than once. But in remote areas that are hard to get to (or get out of) where basics like electricity are unreliable if available at all, a full-sized ultrasound machine isn’t reasonable. 

Compact, light ultrasound devices incorporated into telemedicine kits are literally saving lives in these hard to reach places.

In 2016, The Daily Monitor covered the use of portable ultrasound devices in Uganda – where 63 out of every 1000 infants die before their first birthday – explaining that, “Many of those deaths come from complications that could have been predicted by ultrasound technology.”

Reproductive Health conducted an observational study of 762 pregnant women in rural Guatemala. The expecting mothers received prenatal care that included the use of portable ultrasound equipment, along with blood and urine tests. There was a 64 percent reduction in infant deaths and no maternal deaths in the observed group. 

The technology that supports the portable ultrasound allows doctors, or trained technicians, to immediately view or upload images. The interface, which can be viewed on an iPhone or laptop, is easy to learn and intuitive. Using a telemedicine kit, the images can be securely sent to doctors or hospitals anywhere in the world in real-time, virtually bringing the specialist to the remote patient. 

The Allure of Seeing Your Baby 

There was also a collaborative study that sought ways to appeal to women in very remote areas who were traditionally reluctant to seek any type of prenatal care. 

Doctor’s with Western University did a randomized trial where, through radio ads, they told pregnant women that if they came to the free clinic, they could see their unborn baby. Once the women were at the pop-up clinics, doctors were able to further assess the women and offer other life-saving prenatal measures. In particular, preventing the passage of diseases from mother to child. 

The radio ads were just a clever way to alleviate anxieties about western medicine, and they worked! Six times more women came to the clinic and received medical care. 

When weighing the costs of these handheld ultrasound tools, around $1,500, to the impact they can have on women and children in remote communities around the world, the value is simply priceless. With an ultrasound device as part of a telemedicine kit, more infants in remote areas will be given proper care so they can thrive and their mothers will be right there with them.