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WEKU
Rhitu Chatterjee

A plastic sheet with a pouch could be a 'game changer' for maternal mortality

Pregnant women at Sierra Leone's Gondama Referral Center. Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. A new study looks at an intervention to prevent death from postpartum hemorrhage. (Lynsey Addario/Getty Images)

It's a startling statistic. Every year, 70,000 women around the world basically bleed to death after childbirth. That averages out to nearly 200 deaths a day and makes postpartum hemorrhage a leading cause of maternal deaths.

Now a new study points to a surprisingly simple and inexpensive solution: Basically, if the woman lies on a plastic sheet with a small transparent pouch at the other end to collect the blood, the medical team has an immediate sense of how much danger she's in and can take swift action.

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