APPRECIATING OUR LOCAL MEDICAL INNOVATIONS

In February of 2018, Zacharia Kimengich, a plaster technologist who works at Kenyatta National Hospital, attended a two-week training in London, under the Leaders in Innovation Fellowship Programme, hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The unassuming young man spent the 14 days rubbing shoulders with innovators from around the globe and a host of investors who were willing to put their money in these young peoples’ innovations.

Zach, as he is popularly known, did not land there by mistake. He was finally showing off hours of hard work, passion and dedication. Zach was displaying his paediatric hip spica table. This is a device that is used to treat children with fractures in the lower limbs. It helps the surgeon or the plaster technologist to position the injured child appropriately to enable the plaster cast to be fitted effortlessly, painlessly and in the correct position.

Zach did not get here by mistake. He has spent 15 years working in Kenyatta National Hospital caring for patients with various fractures. When it came to children, the old, almost archaic spica table provided, left him thinking that there had to be a better way to help his little ones. After browsing online for hours on end to see what the options available were, it broke his heart that they had to be so expensive.

Knowing that it would be a tall order to get his department to procure a modern spica table, Zach decided to make one himself. He struggled to move his idea from paper to an actual table and this 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 his first table.

To be able to get international recognition and accolades, Zach has sacrificed a lot. 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.

So, has Zach earned a state commendation for his good work? Not at all. Few people have even heard of it, even amongst his colleagues in the medical field. He is celebrated away from home yet at home, not even our very own Ministry of Health has no idea of the existence of this innovation.

Inventions in the health industry are often driven by the need to improve patient outcomes. Health professionals struggling to keep their patients alive under dire circumstances, are more likely to come up with homegrown solutions that meet the need. In resource-constrained settings like Sub-Saharan Africa, many existing solutions in the first world are out of reach due to the cost.

This shortfall is what results in homegrown solutions that respond to our needs. Zach is not an isolated statistic. The B-Lynch technique for instance, is another invention resulting from a desperate need to save life. Professor Christopher Balogun-Lynch was born in Sierra Leone in 1947 and has been practicing at Milton Keynes General Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England.

In 1997, he came up with this lifesaving procedure that is now almost routinely practiced by obstetricians across the globe to prevent maternal death resulting from post-partum hemorrhage. We compress the mother’s uterus in this surgical procedure, to keep it from bleeding out, without much thought. Many women have been saved from death by use of another homegrown solution.

Today, we celebrate Prof. Christopher B-Lynch across the globe for his contribution to science. In 2015, he was celebrated right here in Kenya by gracing the annual scientific conference of obstetricians and gynaecologists under the Kenya Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society which also doubled up as the International Federation for Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) conference. We were in awe of the legend!

While several technologies exist across the globe to help prevent post-partum hemorrhage by creating a tamponade inside the uterus, they are generally too costly to be locally available. This has not stopped us from improvising. Currently the condom balloon tamponade is another common practice across the third world. A simple matter of 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 is all it takes to save life.

Kangaroo mother care is another third world invention. This is a method of keeping premature newborn babies warm in the place of an incubator. In Bogota, Columbia, mothers we encouraged to keep their babies warm by putting them in skin to skin contact, wrapped together in warm cloth. This resulted from shortage of incubators due to their prohibitive cost. Today, this is practiced worldwide and has massively contributed to reduction in infant mortality.

In recognition, our very own Christine Sammy, a Kitui-based nurse, won the 2013 International Neonatal Nursing Excellence Award for her role in in markedly reducing neonatal death in her hospital, from over 50% to below 10% 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 strive to encourage our own health professionals who continue to take this challenge head on, and ease the burden of ill health among our people.