This is TED Health. I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter.

You're about to hear a story about how a medical residence experience in an under-resourced clinic in Mumbai sparked an idea that would later save the lives of countless women and babies.

In her May 2021, Ted Fellows talk, Maternal Health Innovator, Dr. Aparna Hedge,

shares why providing young women with the right medical information at the right time not only

prevents illness, but can also create lasting culture change for generations to come.

Anita died in my presence while giving birth to life.

She bled to death and lost her child.

The irony was that she had accessed care.

In the first trimester of pregnancy,

she had visited the antinatal clinic of the hospital in Mumbai where I was doing

residency. But over four hours awaiting in the hot, sweaty, dingy, overcrowded clinic,

just to get a minute with me. A harried, overworked, overworked resident doctor meant that she never

came back, only to die in labour months later.

I was wracked with guilt.

If only I had counseled her about the dangerous signs,

why she needed to access regular care.

Would she and her child have survived?

She did not die due to a terminal condition.

She died because of underlying anemia,

an easily treatable, preventable condition.

I saw these stories daily.

Systemic preventable problems resulting in mothers and children dying

...