Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH): a global public health concern
Severe bleeding after childbirth - postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) - is the leading cause of maternal mortality world-wide. Each year, about 14 million women experience PPH resulting in about 70,000 maternal deaths globally. Even when women survive, they often need urgent surgical interventions to control the bleeding and may be left with lifelong reproductive disability.
Why is a PPH Summit needed and why now?
Despite
the ambition to end preventable maternal deaths by 2030, several countries are not on track to meet their SDG-3 maternal mortality targets. From discovery science to identify new innovations through to implementation of existing proven interventions,
limited progress has been made in the field of PPH care over the last decade. Few, attempts are being made to overcome the challenges faced by available PPH medicines that are widely embedded in clinical practice. Individual and health-system level
interventions that have significantly reduced PPH-related morbidities and deaths in high income countries continue to elude health systems of low-income countries as they have not been or cannot be implemented at scale.
In this video, Dr Olufemi Oladapo, Head of Maternal and Perinatal Health Unit at WHO and HRP, says collaboration is key to improving outcomes at national and global level.
While international developmental partners tend to have similar objectives regarding PPH priorities, efforts are often misaligned because of a lack of cohesive coordination at the global and country levels, as well as a lack of end-to-end thinking as it pertains to product development, introduction, and impact assessment. Academic researchers and innovators in industry often do not know what type of evidence to generate and how to connect evidence to policy decision-making, leading to a lot of research waste, and a painfully slow process of translating research ideas to clinical impact at the patient level. Likewise, target product profiles [TPP] have not generally been described prior to R & D of PPH interventions, and the concept of target policy profiles [TPop] (to identify key research questions to support policy changes at the point of evidence generation and dissemination) is relatively new to those who make research funding decisions. In short, there is no clarity on what is in the pipeline regarding PPH products or interventions, or on what an ideal future PPH products or policy requirements should look like.
The Summit will provide a forum for researchers, industry, policymakers, funders, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations to engage in discussions on PPH care and agree on concrete steps that will shape PPH future in the short, medium- and longer term. The Summit will serve as the launching pad for a focused global initiative that could substantially alleviate the suffering of women from PPH and move the world closer to achieving 2030 SDG 3.1 target, in line with the WHO’s thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW-13). Through this Summit, WHO/HRP will catalyse alignments among experts and promote collaborations and coalitions across different organizations working to reduce the burden of PPH and its consequences in LMICs
Outcomes of the summit
An important output of this Summit will be consensus-based Road Map and Call-to Action that will shape the future of PPH research (from discovery science through post marketing surveillance of PPH products/interventions), as well as global and country level normative, implementation and advocacy priorities to reduce the burden of PPH, particularly in LMICs. The Road Map will present comprehensive priority research, normative, implementation, and advocacy agendas for improving PPH care and outcomes at global and country levels between 2023 and 2030.