Creating hospital teams devoted to treating pregnant women who have sickle cell disease reduced death rates for those women by almost 90 percent, a study at a major hospital in Ghana showed.

Sickle cell disease is common in West Africa, and among black people in the Americas whose ancestors came from West Africa. It is caused by a genetic mutation that if inherited from only one parent protects against malaria, but if inherited from both parents can be lethal. Red blood cells can collapse into curved “sickle” shapes and clump together to jam capillaries, sometimes causing excruciating pain, shortness of breath and death.

At the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, the capital of Ghana, women with sickle cell disease were about 12 times as likely to die in childbirth as women without it, according to a study presented last month at the American Society of Hematology.

To overcome that, the hospital formed teams of nurses, obstetricians and blood and lung specialists and assigned them to care for all pregnant women with the disease. If the women suffered serious pain or breathing crises, and when they began labor, they got beds in two wards overseen by the team.