Improving Women’s Health Worldwide.

The London based CRADLE team of volunteers aim to improve global women’s health through innovative research.

Every day 800 women die from preventable causes, related to pregnancy and childbirth. 94% of all maternal deaths occur in low and middle income countries.  The major complications that account for nearly 75% of maternal deaths are:
hypertension (high blood pressure during pregnancy known as pre-eclampsia, leading to eclampsia or seizures and / or stroke);
haemorrhage (severe bleeding mostly after childbirth);
sepsis (infection usually after childbirth).

We are passionate about providing effective, affordable, robust and mobile, yet easy to apply, non-intrusive diagnostic solutions, to improve maternal care and reduce maternal deaths, particularly in areas too far to reach health care establishments.

The CRADLE Vital Signs Alert is the world’s first medical device validated to detect high blood pressure and shock related to bleeding, and infection in pregnant women, which cause over 75% of maternal deaths. Our work has shown that the CRADLE VSA could reduce maternal deaths in low- and middle- income settings by up to 60%, saving over 100,000 lives a year.

Our Aims:

  • Create a device capable of accurately detecting abnormalities in women’s vital signs during pregnancy.
  • Develop this device so that it is specifically suitable for use in under- resourced environments, based on all team members` practical professional experience in such locations.
  • Assess the introduction of this device into routine care of women in communities and hospitals in low and middle-income countries and by mobile health carers, e.g. midwives.
  • Determine whether introduction of the device improves the healthcare that women receive and therefore reduces rates of maternal death and severe illness.
  • Evaluate the role of the CRADLE device in other patient populations within low income settings, e.g. refugee settlements, developing / training their own basic treatment facilities.

On the suggestion of Cradle Trial, for the worldwide Rotary network to voluntarily assist with raising worldwide awareness and understanding of the new Cradle Trial method of diagnostics.

CRADLE VSA training in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement, Uganda.

Objectives of the www.Rotary.org voluntary Project for www.cradletrial.org

  1. To start as soon as possible reducing the 300,000 annual maternal mortalities (MM) by
  2. Increasing Awareness and Understanding of cradletrial.org as a means of reducing MM by early, efficient diagnosis of irregularities during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia) and of the risks from foreseeable childbirth complications: bleeding and sepsis
  3. Possible ways, by which those risks can be prevented in difficult, under- resourced circumstances e.g.
    1. To incorporate the CRADLE VSA into routine maternity care to improve early detection of abnormal vital signs and reduce preventable maternal deaths in low and middle income settings.
    2. To improve understanding of the importance of vital signs monitoring amongst health workers and pregnant women.
    3. To evaluate the CRADLE VSA and its ability to calculate shock index in non-pregnant populations.
    4. Instant top emergency (red light) cases by exceptionally obtaining transport and priority admission to a health service facility, if any at all reachable, and / or top risk priorities admission, enabling full treatment, including surgery,
    5. When (a) not available, possibly preparation of premature delivery by weighing risks to the mother’s life against the problems of too prematurely delivered babies’ reduced survival chances, particularly without any protective equipment (incubators? but mother milk and -care.)
  4. Preparing for possibly excessive bleeding during childbirth and provision of medication to prevent / reduce bleeding
  5. Provision of constantly updated news from applications and literature on this whole subject to broaden global understanding of this method and low cost availability for purchase by non-profit users
  6. Instruction, finding and training of untrained health workers and possibly individual users
  7. Instructions for ordering devices to worldwide destinations being subject to frequent adjustments
  8. Starting up and development of minimal, possibly voluntary local pregnancy advisory and treatment facilities, and ideally providing mobile online emergency connectivity

Our Collaborators

Check in on our collaborators who are also working hard to improve healthcare in low-resource settings around the world.