Kenya, “My first ultrasound”: a 4×4 ambulance to guarantee safe maternity for all

NAIROBI – “I am happy because it is the first time that I have an ultrasound”, a sentence is enough to tell the happiness of Sylvia Teeka, one of the participants in the project I’mMobile, a mobile ultrasound service that reaches remote areas and slums in Kajiado County, Kenya. Thanks to a portable ultrasound system and a tablet app, future Kenyan mothers, in fact, since last year have been able to undergo the first ultrasound scan to check their health and pregnancy progress, even if they live in rural communities far from urban centers. The project was selected in November 2020 for the Call Technologies for Sustainable Development, promoted by Cariplo Foundation And Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation as part of the Innovation for Development program, and dedicated to existing, concrete, inclusive and sustainable solutions, with the aim of enhancing them and replicating their applicability in other contexts or countries.

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Areas with high maternal and infant mortality rates. To make it happen is the association Friends of the World – World Friends Onlus in partnership with the social enterprise Health-E-Net and with the support, in the first phase of the project, of AICS – the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation. In fact, the organization has been involved in the management of Ruaraka Uhai Neema Hospital for years. An area, the one in which the organization operates, in which there are alarming numbers with high rates of maternal and neonatal mortality as in the case of the slums present near the capital, but also the most peripheral areas of the country discount the distance from centers doctors who can guarantee pregnancies safely.

Over 100 itinerant ultrasound scans. Know the expected date of birth, the health conditions of the fetus and the mother. Essential information for the health of children and their mothers, even more so in a population where 17% of cases concern women under the age of 19. Since the start of the project, developed in the counties of Kajiado West and Central, over 100 “itinerant” ultrasound scans have been carried out and by 2024 the project plans to broaden the range of action by extending the service to other neighboring countries as well. But the ultrasound is only one of the many aspects of the project, albeit certainly the most important: the 4×4 ambulance that reaches rural areas offers, in addition to a nursing service, also that of psychological assistance often useful to accompany the path of the new – moms.