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According to a 2023 report by the United Nations Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group, around 70% of the world’s maternal deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Wellness checks for pregnant women in this region is not so common.
In rural areas, the clinics that might perform such checks often struggle with issues such as low quality of care and a shortage of doctors with the necessary expertise—or are simply too remote for pregnant women to travel to.
Photo Credit: KIZUNA
This was the situation faced by Kuniyuki FURUTA, CEO of SOIK Corporation. Furuta had previously been involved with African health and medical care as an official at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which handles Japan’s overseas development and assistance (ODA) efforts.
Ever since his time with the agency, Furuta has been determined to find solutions for the challenges linked to health care in Africa, and in September 2019, he founded SOIK with the specific mission of reducing preventable maternal and child deaths.
SOIK distributes a digital maternal and child health package called SPAQ. Each SPAQ kit contains a portable sonography, essential for maternal wellness checks, along with a fetal monitor and digital blood pressure meter that can be linked to a smartphone to gather pre-birth health data in one location.
Data analysis and coordination with medical organizations are built into the system to permit a rapid response to any downturns or abnormalities in the mother’s test results.
SPAQ is readily usable by nurses and midwives who are not specialist doctors as they visit the different villages on their route.
As a result, even pregnant women in rural areas can now receive a certain level of prenatal medical care and detection of life-threatening issues such as ectopic pregnancies and placenta previa.
More than 10,000 digital prenatal checkups using SPAQ have been performed so far, and the wellness check rate for pregnant women has gone up by around 75 percent per facility.
Most importantly, around 100 lives have been saved by early detection of maternal health issues.
For an upgrade, SOIK is planning to introduce “AI sonography” for instant analysis of sonograms. The technology will distinguish between normal and abnormal findings, and provide suggestions for responding to any abnormalities that are detected.
Once AI sonography is introduced, volunteers using SPAQ will be able to perform maternal wellness checks even in villages with no medical workers, helping even more pregnant women receive this vital care.
CEO FURUTA says,“If we can expand the ranks of SPAQ users from doctors and midwives to include community volunteers as well, women who were unable to receive screenings in the past will have access to them, and wellness check rates for pregnant women will soar.”
“Our service is specialized for maternal health care function support in small communities like those found in rural areas,” he says.
