Jorge Odon He is 70 years old, he is a native of Lanus and spent most of his life working in a alignment and balancing workshop in Buenos Aires. He did not study medicine or biology. But in August 2006 he woke up at dawn with an idea that, two decades later, was already attended by more than 300 births in hospitals in Europe and reached the pages of the BBC.
It all started with a workshop trick. An employee showed him how to remove a cork from inside a bottle without breaking it: he put a plastic bag in it, filled it with air and pulled. The cork came out by itself. Odón was impressed with the mechanism and that same night the idea came to him: the same principle could work to assist a birth. He told his wife that this could help facilitate the birth of a baby. She, as he himself told BBC Mundo, did not give it much importance at that time.
Days later, Odón met with a partner, the engineer Carlos Modenaand a doctor in Buenos Aires to present the idea. The concept ended up in the hands of the obstetrician Mario Merialdithen head of the Department of Reproductive Health of the World Health Organization (WHO). Merialdi saw the prototype for the first time during a conference in Buenos Aires and was shocked. “I was shocked by two aspects: its simplicity and its security,” he told BBC Mundo. “It can be easily used, allowing it to be used by both doctors and midwives, ensuring access in areas with weaker health systems,” he said.
The result was the OdonAssist: an inflatable cuff that is inserted into the vaginal canal and adapts to the baby’s head. Once positioned, it is inflated with air and allows controlled traction at the same time as the woman pushes, facilitating extraction. without the need for forceps or an emergency cesarean section. The British doctor Emily Hottonlinked to the tests in the Bristol Southmead Hospitalexplained the principle to the BBC’s Woman’s Hour programme: the cuff is designed to “pull the vaginal muscle away from the baby” rather than “pulling on its head”, as occurs with rigid instruments.
In 2025, OdonAssist obtained the CE certification and began to be used in 40 hospitals from five European countrieswhere he already participated in more than 300 births. It had previously been tested in 48 births in Argentina. In no case were there injuries to either the baby or the mother. Specialists consider it the first major obstetric innovation since the 1950s. Odón sold his workshop a few years ago and today lives retired in Uruguay, although he continues to devise solutions.
