New Life in Sierra Leone

By Sarah Turley: June 30th, 2011

“We have a saying in Sierra Leone,” explains student midwife Nancy Kelly. “A pregnant woman is between life and death.’ She could die at any time.”

We are standing in the humid heat of the maternity ward at Makeni Hospital, Sierra Leone. Nancy has just this minute delivered the first baby of her shift – a tiny boy who announced his arrival with a healthy squawk. The baby’s grandmother is singing a song of thanks and joy through big sobs of relief, and now she is running down the corridor – to tell her family that her daughter Rugiatu and her baby are alive.

“When a mother and baby are healthy – it’s like a miracle,” Nancy continues. Which is true in this case, as if it hadn’t been for Nancy, it’s very likely both Rugiatu and her baby boy would be dead.

Rugiatu has eclampsia, a life-threatening complication during pregnancy that causes mothers to fit and coma. But thanks to VSO volunteer Dr Alex Burns’s teaching, Nancy identified Rugiatu’s condition, and knew that in order to save her and her baby she would have to induce labour.

“I did exactly what Alex taught me – I monitored the labour through the partograph [a simple chart that identifies potential problems during childbirth] and the two lives were successful. She gave birth to the baby, the baby is alive and the mother is alive!”

Many mothers in Sierra Leone are not so lucky: the lifetime chance of a woman dying in pregnancy or childbirth is a staggering one in eight. A drastic shortage of healthcare professionals in Sierra Leone means it is very difficult to improve the situation: at present there are only 95 midwives for a population of 5.7 million; at Makeni Hospital, a referral hospital that serves almost a million people, there are only two doctors.

For this reason it is easy to understand why Sierra Leone so desperately needs VSO volunteer doctors and midwives. As well as assisting in service delivery in hospitals across the country, they are training student doctors, midwives and nurses who will ensure mothers like Rugiatu survive childbirth and live to bring up healthy babies.

As well as working with Alex at the hospital, Nancy has also been taught by another VSO volunteer, midwife Alice Waterman, who spent a year in Makeni training Nancy and 138 other student midwifes. When they graduate, Sierra Leone will have more than doubled its number of practising midwives.

Standing in that ward – so different from any in the UK – I saw firsthand how important the work of VSO volunteer health professionals is. Volunteers are not just sharing their skills – they are motivating dedicated professionals like Nancy to see that they can do truly incredible things: things that will save the lives of women like Rugiatu, and thousands more like her.

“I’m always proud working as a midwife,” says Nancy, as she wraps Fatima’s little boy in a shawl and hands him to her for their first cuddle. “Through the motivation of Alice, I’m loving the job more. I had somebody come from far off, trigger what is in me, so that I can use it to save lives, and now I am seeing it work I feel good. “

1 Comment