The period between birth and the first week of life is one of the most treacherous for a newborn and its mother, and in low-resource settings the high risk of infection compounds the dangers to both. One of the more common threats to newborns, particularly in these settings, are umbilical infections, which render a newborn’s umbilical cord both a line to life and an anchor for deadly infection.

A bicycle inner tube? Where were we on this? Well to continue the story, in 2009 Drs. Mark Hauswald, Nancy Kerr and colleagues published in the International Journal of Emergency Medicine. Their findings were on an improvised pneumatic anti-shock garment. At that stage, the device was three inner tubes, one around each leg and one around the pelvic area. The tubes were pumped up to 45 psi. They found that both the improvised (bike tire) device and the non-pneumatic anti shock garment decreased distal aortic blood flow but that the improvised device decreased it by a higher margin.