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Inspired by illness: A Nigerian mother’s homegrown remedy for neonatal jaundice

Forty eight hours after Tonbra Oboro was born and back home, his mother, Virtue, thought his fair skin tone was a mere resemblance to his…

Forty eight hours after Tonbra Oboro was born and back home, his mother, Virtue, thought his fair skin tone was a mere resemblance to his grandmother’s. The older woman noticed it was unusual and insisted they returned to hospital. 

The diagnosis and very worried look on the faces of the doctors told Virtue, her assumptions were miles away from the life threatening risks of her son’s current reality. 

Virtue said, “My joy was short-lived as I helplessly watched my son deteriorate and the doctors run helter-skelter to save him.”

Jaundice is a yellow discoloration of the skin and eyes caused by the build-up of bilirubin, a waste material, in the blood, due to a baby’s underdeveloped liver. Neonatal jaundice occurs in the first 28 days of life, Dr. Rose Abah a Paediatric Consultant, at the Federal Medical Centre Markurdi, explained.

Dr. Abah said, “In the new born period, if you have excess breakdown of red blood cells, the liver is not able to cope. With the fact that the enzymes are not fully mature, you can have excess, which spills over as jaundice.”

Some babies are more at risk of developing jaundice.

“Preterm babies, babies of mothers with blood group O+ and babies with risk of developing sepsis,” among others, fall in this category, Dr. Abah said. 

In newborns, jaundice is usually from unconjugated bilirubin and it is highly toxic to the growing brain.

According to Abah, “For a mother who is O+ you want to look at other risk factors and do a serum bilirubin check and the baby’s blood group, bilirubin level for the child and then the blood group type. 

“These are the minimum you are required to do. If the baby’s blood group turns out to be O, and there are no other risk factors, you can relax. But if it is different from the mother’s, then you suspect a likelihood of incompatibility.”

Jaundice can be deadly if untreated. In Tonbra’s case, the doctors feared that complications had already set in. Swift decisions were taken to start a phototherapy session but units were unavailable.

With the delays, the newborn’s bilirubin levels increased. Another mother opted for her baby to be discharged from a unit to give Tonbra a chance. No sooner had he settled into the unit when darkness struck due to power outage – a typical Nigerian narrative. 

Still shuddering from the experience, Virtue said, “There was no available working generator or charged inverter in the neonatal intensive care unit at that time. My spirit went cold!”

The little fighter managed to stay on, for an emergency blood transfusion and was able to get into a phototherapy unit which became home for the next eight days. 

It was only after her son had been stabilised, discharged and explanations of the odds against him in the preceding days, that Virtue understood the dangers which threatened his living a full healthy life. The dangers included cerebral palsy, brain damage, deafness, blindness, mental retardation, slow developmental stages and even death. “We had escaped all these by whiskers.”

She said, “As we got home, I recovered slowly from the whole episode and decided to read more about it. I realised neonatal jaundice isn’t as simple as it seems. I listed down the visible problems we had encountered in hospital – lack of phototherapy units, epileptic power supply, cost and dehydration of the baby while under the lights.”

This experience birthed Crib a’glow, a home-grown innovation Virtue developed, to end neonatal jaundice while addressing the challenges her son had to overcome. 

Crib a’glow is a low-cost, solar powered neonatal phototherapy device that delivers high intensity in low resource areas were babies die from jaundice. 

The mother of two, a Fine Artist with a specialty in Graphics and Product Designing, developed it with the help of medical doctors, engineers and biomedical engineers, to come up with a solution that breaks the barrier of availability, electricity, dehydration and cost in phototherapy treatment.

Jaundice is a very common condition among newborns and its treatment also easy, with options including phototherapy, blood transfusion and pharmacotherapy. 

Abah said, “The cost of using a phototherapy unit is between N300 to N500 per day in public health facilities,” It however, cost Virtue an additional N200, 000 including miscellaneous like hand gloves, food and syringes, among others, in the public hospital in Bayelsa, South South Nigeria, where her son was admitted.

Over 40% of infants lack access to phototherapy treatment because of poor or lack of electricity and the cost of using the phototherapy unit. Depending on the severity, treatment in a unit could be for a maximum of three days and in some cases up to two weeks. But where it goes beyond this, then there is no need for the unit as it has become a case of conjugated bilirubin, not jaundice.

After four failed attempts, Virtue and her team succeeded the fifth time. The unit which costs $420 and can be hired, is currently being used in hospitals across Nigeria, with plans underway for export to Ghana.

Regardless, there are still hurdles to contend with.

According to Virtue, “Our major challenge is within the hospitals and the bureaucratic bottleneck in government. However, we are working on that already.  We are using a marketing strategy and are gradually breaking in. Crib a’glow is not a luxury product. It is a need we’re meeting and I believe businesses that fulfil needs will eventually have good patronage.”

For the entrepreneurial mum, in addition to meeting the standard of phototherapy in developing countries, smaller communities in developed countries can also have access to the Crib a’glow in their homes.

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