Maternal mortality in the Global South is often discussed as a crisis of scarcity. Too few midwives, underfunded hospitals, shortages of blood, beds and essential medicines. These are real constraints that many countries and communities face. Yet reducing maternal death to the single narrative of resource deficits obscures some of the most transformative solutions that come from within these communities.
And innovation, in this context, isn’t just technological. It is social, collective and deeply embedded in local realities. Maternal mortality is shaped as much by social structures and community-based maternal health interventions as by the resources within a hospital.
Few stories illustrate this better than the work of Bangladeshi obstetrician Dr. Sayeba Akhter. In the early 2000s, Akhter developed a low-cost uterine balloon tamponade—assembled from a condom, Foley catheter and syringe—to manage postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), the leading cause of maternal death in Bangladesh. The device, whose production costs less than a dollar, stabilized women who otherwise had no timely access to surgical care or blood transfusions.
Two decades later, Dr. Sidrah Nausheen, a consultant Obstetrician and vice chair at The Aga Khan University Hospital, has revitalized this technique and taken it further—by rolling it out in Bangladeshi facilities and promoting it via social media. In a short Instagram reel, she demonstrates the assembly and use of the balloon device, showing step-by-step how the condom is inserted, the balloon inflated and then inserted into the uterus to control bleeding.
