Elana Dallas is in Sierra Leone as part of an Amnesty International team researching maternal mortality
Monday 2 February: We’re in Kabala, in the north, a place of rocky hills and outcrops… and cows.
Our itinerary for today has been organized by CARE, who run a number of community projects in the district.
We visit a maternity waiting house in Mannah, where women go from their villages when they’re nine months’ pregnant and wait until the birth. They don’t have to do the journey (often many miles with no transport), there’s a community health worker on hand, and they get a (rare) few days of rest.
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Elana Dallas is in Makeni, Sierra Leone, as part of an Amnesty International team researching maternal mortality
Another bumpy drive, this time to Makeni, the regional centre. Again to the hospital – the main government referral hospital for the area. A hospital with no running water, no electricity unless the generator runs (so you have to pay for the fuel for the generator when you have an operation), no X-ray machine, no operating light in the operating theatre.
But there is some good news – UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, are paying for drugs and giving top-up fees to the staff here, so care for women giving birth is free. We meet some women whose lives have been saved – one who didn’t know she was having twins until she went into labour, despite five trips to the ante-natal clinic.
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Elana Dallas is in Kambia, Sierra Leone, as part of an Amnesty International team researching maternal mortality
Saturday 31 January: We spent today following up the stories of women who died in childbirth. We found some of the cases in the hospital records, some by just asking around. Everyone knows someone who’s died – in a taxi on the way to hospital, at home, in the hospital.
People are unbelievably helpful – they get in the car to take us to meet the families we’re looking for, they help us with translations, they give up their time to us, willingly. And, unfailingly, when we arrive at someone’s house, they bring out benches and chairs for us to sit on in some shade and talk to us as dozens of village children and adults gather round watching this event.
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Elana Dallas is in Sierra Leone as part of an Amnesty International team researching maternal mortality
Friday 30 January: The road from Freetown to Kambia is red, dusty, potholed and lined with palm trees. We’re told it’s much improved, and that the weather is really cold right now… as the car lurches and the sweat pours down, that’s hard to believe.
We’re here to find out about maternal mortality, so we came straight to Kambia hospital. It’s the only government hospital in the district, with one permanent doctor, who’s off on training right now. There’s no running water, and electricity only when they run the generator.
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