A 27-week foetus with anaemia received a life-saving treatment from doctors at the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali (CHUK), on Thursday, January 16.

The hospital said on Friday its maternal-foetal medicine specialists performed a successful intrauterine foetal blood transfusion for a pregnant woman at 27 weeks of the gestation.

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Intrauterine transfusion is a procedure in which red blood cells from a donor are injected into an unborn baby with conditions which destroy their blood.

"The procedure is the first of its kind in Rwanda in which the foetus has anaemia caused by maternal rhesus isoimmunisation,” the hospital said in a post on X.

"This exercise will be repeated every week until we replace the blood volume or the baby starts making urine and haematocrit [the percentage of red blood cells in the blood] is above 30 per cent.”

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The conditions that could lead to the destruction of an unborn baby’s blood include maternal rhesus isoimmunisation, which happens when a pregnant woman's blood protein is incompatible with that of the baby, causing her immune system to react and destroy the baby's blood.

When the proteins on the surface of the baby's red blood cells are different from the mother's protein, the mother's immune system produces antibodies that fight and destroy the baby's cells, according to USF Health, a health enterprise affiliated to the University of South Florida in the US.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), anaemia is a condition in which the number of red blood cells or the haemoglobin concentration within them is lower than normal.

Haemoglobin is needed to carry oxygen and if a person have too few or abnormal red blood cells, or not enough haemoglobin, there will be a decreased capacity of the blood to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. This results in symptoms such as fatigue, weakness, dizziness and shortness of breath, among others.