Well, I think we have to thank the women in first line who accept this regime of self-care and by doing that created real progress, scientifically and socially, women told us that they love to care for themselves and to follow this new paradigm. On the other hand, having learned that all scientists in the world cannot solve the problem alone I also like to thank our State government for carefully listening and understanding the broad implications of prevention of preterm birth and the need for a simple cheap mass screening.

Thank you, you are right, to teach our residents to use also the very basic means is so important for their future approach to obstetrics. The simple thing so difficult to do, as our poet Brecht said, however, not to be misunderstood, this regime is not more or less than a pure screening option in order to detect women at risk, not the solution. We know a lot about management of threatening premature birth. The problem left is to find those women in time who can benefit from all our experience and knowledge, worldwide! So the method had to be simple, cheap, for laypersons. If someone has an alternative or better idea, we would be glad to learn. Let me know. However, we felt that we had to start action now with the current level of medical expertise, including the women as partners by teaching them self-measurement to become subject beside of being object in their own pregnancy. There is still a lot to do and to study, especially if prepartum pH-screening can also reduce incidence of postpartum maternal death worldwide due to prepartum treatment of genital infection or BV.

A MASTER CLASS @ PTB, Mothers’ unfulfilled participation goals, and biases against innovation and mother baby health and lifelong potential. I hope that you give next year’s Initial talk.. please consider 1) making an easy to read selected list of references and 2) an annotated synopsis of these that parents, payors, all providers and all families can readily address and give to their own networks . Thanks , as always. For your leadership and patience!

Thank you. I am optimistic. Right now we are working with a company on a new pH-device, simple, really cheap, handsome, however, that is not the real problem. Laws and bureaucracy in Europe have hampered the spread of the former pH-EcoCare and we had to change it, the same in the US, so we have to solve this problem first in order to maintain pH-self-measurement as convienient for the women as it has been used to be.

Hi, Marti, there are other devices available in Europe as well as in the US, however, either they are made by plastic,complex and kind of complicated, non-ecological and expensive, 1...3 $ a piece, or women use simply the pure paper, mostly with their fingers in the vagina. We are quite convinced that a simple paper roll as the pH-EcoCare with the indicator attached is the optimum. The practical pH-glove introduced by Saling (~ 1 $ a piece) and used in our initial studies 1998 and 2020 is taken off the market for several reasons. Considering products and prices you have to take in account that the need is 20 ... 50 pieces per pregnancy and long lasting stabile pH-paper in all climates around the world.