Haleema Shakur Still

They were more likely to have babies die soon after birth.

So there were lots of really bad things associated with anemia.

And if you can prevent women having anemia before becoming pregnant, you might be able to prevent a lot of these really bad things.

So we're looking now at woman three, which is treating young women before they become pregnant

And one of the areas that's totally neglected in the treatment of anemia is menstrual bleeding.

So we think that by sort of reducing menstrual bleeding, we could improve anemia quicker.

If we give them tranexamic acid while they're having their menstrual period, we want to see if we can improve their anemia better and faster.

Oh, yeah.

If the Woman 2 trial had shown tranexamic acid prevent postpartum hemorrhage, we'd have said, yep, job done.

But the learning from it was enormous because the impact of anemia on pregnancy, on women, on their fetuses, on their newborns.

And the problem is anemia can cause impairment in neurodevelopment.

That becomes generational because you can't correct that in a child once the child is born.

And then you have a child going on to have children in the future and it can go on and on and on.

So if you can stop that from happening and, you know, half a billion women

worldwide are anemic.

I think seeing the potential impact it can have.

And I think...

I can still remember when I first started doing clinical trials and on my consent forms, I had to say, if you're of childbearing potential, you couldn't take part in my trials.

And because the ethics committees made me do that.

And now I'm able to do the opposite, which is having those same women generate knowledge for themselves