WUNRN
An additional version of this
article on Liberia Maternal Mortality and Primary Health Care Needs - is
Attached - and was submitted to WUNRN by the UN World Health Organization -
WHO.
Thursday July 16th 2009
According to Unicef, 1,200 mothers died for every 100,000 live births in Liberia in 2005 – or one death every 83 births. In 2007, the under-five mortality rate was 133 per 1,000 babies born; while 93 infants per 1,000 births will not live to the age of one. Lucy Wonder Barh is a midwife at John F Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. She describes the battle to save the lives of women and babies in a country scarred by war and disease.
Women on the maternity ward at JFK memorial hospital,
The most difficult day in this job is when you lose both the mother and the
baby. Most of the time when this happens the mothers have come to the hospital
much too late and there isn't much we can do to help them. Many of them are
suffering from malaria, in fact almost 100% of all patients who come here have
malaria symptoms, but this is particularly dangerous for the expectant mothers.
Many also have pre-eclampsia or hypertension and this means their blood
pressure is so high that labour is difficult and often very dangerous.
Some of the mothers come in after being in labour for 48 hours or more and have
travelled great distances to get to the hospital in the back of a truck or even
on the back of a bicycle. I know that if she'd just come in 12 hours earlier
she and her baby might have survived. Many of the fathers are desperate and
it's hard trying to calm them down when you know that the situation is hopeless
for their wife.
When I trained to do this job I never thought it would be such hard work. There
are only 35 midwives in John F Kennedy Memorial Hospital and every day is a
struggle to see as many women as we can. I often work from 7am to sometimes 9pm
or 10pm at night, but I wouldn't do any other job. I always wanted to be a
health worker because I think it is just about the best thing you can do with
your life here in Liberia.
Even though I know that the most need is in the rural areas, I don't want to
leave Monrovia because my family are here and you can have a normal life. Out
in the rural areas the health facilities are really bad, there are no
medication, no electricity, no transport. Many women go and see traditional
midwives who don't have the medical training you need to know when a mother is
having so many problems she needs to get to a clinic as soon as possible.
We also see a lot of problems with women who have undergone abortions.Some of
them come in with ruptured bowels and their reproductive organs are destroyed
and you know they might never get the chance to be a mother.
The war only ended in 2003 and I still think we are all affected by what we
went through. The most important thing is that peace sustains here in Liberia
and we can try and move on from what happened but things always seem to drag us
back to the past.
Every day we treat women who have undergone awful injuries or have been raped.
There is a big problem with children who were soldiers during the war. Here in
Monrovia people are scared of them, because many are on drugs and are desperate
and so will rob you if they can. It's easy to forget that they were only
children when they were made to fight. The only way to help them is to try and
give them some kind of psychological help, but there is not enough money to do
this.
Some of the girls have been kept as wives by the soldiers and so were subjected
to terrible acts when they were very young and they have big problems when they
come to try and give birth. There are many fertility problems because of the
injuries that were sustained by Liberia's women during the war and for a women,
being infertile here is a very bad thing and will make your life very
difficult. Many people haven't begun to forgive themselves for what happened
during the war and now there are huge problems with poverty. There are no jobs
and it is always the women who suffer the most.
Because there aren't enough jobs or enough food we get a lot of premature
births because the mothers aren't healthy during the pregnancy. Sometimes the
babies are no bigger than your hand, but some of them live regardless and that
is the best thing, seeing a baby you have helped deliver make it through and
survive.
Lucy Wonder Barh was interviewed by Guardian journalist Annie Kelly
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