By Aminata Phidelia Allie
We all believed she would give birth this month. She even refused to apply for a maternity leave because she wanted to do so in her ninth month. That way she could spend at least two months with her baby before returning to work after her three months leave period. Since she got pregnant, Crispina Taylor believed she would give birth to a baby girl. She already has a six-year old son, named Daniel Taylor Junior. Her husband, to whom she got married last December, is named Daniel Taylor senior. So they named their unborn child Daniella. Mama Daniella, as we called her since her pregnancy, is Politico’s Parliamentary reporter.
Daniella grow rapidly inside mummy’s womb since her parents got married last year. This may be hugely owing to the fact that Mama Daniella ate too much. The guys in Politico’s newsroom always raised their voices whenever they saw her eating-and she seemed to do so every 30 minutes. “It is not like I like the too much eating my sister. Even I get tired of it but what can I do when Daniella gets hungry?” she used to tell me.
On the morning of Tuesday, April 28, Mama Daniella called the office to inform us that she had been admitted the day before (Monday, April 27) at a private hospital on Fourah Bay Road, Eastern Freetown. That is the hospital she had been going for prenatal care. She told us she was already in labor though the pain was yet severe. She said the doctor had told her Daniella was showing 2cm. On Wednesday however, this pregnant woman was discharged after the doctor again told her her labour had been premature due to malaria traces in her blood. We all cried her down for falsely crying ‘wolf’. On Thursday night, this woman, who had been discharged the previous day on doctor’s orders, gave birth to her baby girl. Her labour had started at home and she was rushed to the hospital again. Anyone who has grasped the essence of this piece will understand that Mama Daniella’s case is very common in Sierra Leone, even before the Ebola outbreak.
In a country where everything is a privilege for the less privileged, many people would believe it is only those pregnant women who register for prenatal care at government hospitals that stand the chance of dying in labour. Many a time therefore, we overlook the fact that even those registered with private doctors die as a result of either carelessness or unprofessionalism on the part of private doctors and health workers. Many pregnant women are turned away by the hour with information about their labours being premature or because they have longer labour periods and the hospitals lack beds to admit them. Unlike Mama Daniella who lives in Freetown and had easier access to a health center, so many other women die daily because of non-accessibility to health facilities. This is very common in the provinces where hospitals are miles away from villages. And at a time like this in Sierra Leone [Ebola period] traditional birth attendants are banned from delivering pregnant women. But even in the city, let us think about the possibility that Mama Daniella has health complications added to the fact that she resides in Waterloo, the border town between Freetown urban and Freetown rural.
According to a recent report by Doctors of the World on the country’s healthcare system, Sierra Leone’s healthcare system is the worst in the world. It says more people had died within the last over eight months of the Ebola epidemic in the country. This, notwithstanding the fact that the deaths of mothers and babies in childbirth have kept rising significantly over the years. This, according to the report, is also due to fears of the vastly negative effect of the epidemic on the partial Free Health Care (FHC) programme, implemented by the government in 2010. The FHC was designed specifically to target children under five, suckling mothers and pregnant women. The report authors also attributed the situation to the haphazard distribution of medical staff at clinics and health centers. But the fact also that almost all our hospitals, especially the government hospitals, are under-equipped, both in terms of professional staff and logistics, is another major cause of the high rate of maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone.
In terms of maternal and infant healthcare, Sierra Leone is considered the worst country worldwide as she has the highest child and maternal mortality rates in the world. This is mainly because of reluctance by the government and private individuals to invest in health programmes, malnutrition and harmful cultural practices, according to the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) former Executive Director, Ann Veneman. she said the country also has the worst record for prenatal care, with one in eight women dying during pregnancy or childbirth, compared to a one in 76 average in the rest of the developing world and one in 8,000 in the developed world. “It shows by comparison the difficulties women face in this country,” Veneman had said back in 2008.
According to a UNICEF survey, pregnant women are dying in Sierra Leone mainly because they have limited or no access to healthcare or because the quality of care is poor. They die due to haemorrhage, sepsis, hypertensive disorders, unsafe abortion and prolonged or obstructed labour. All these, according to UNICEF, are complications which can often be effectively treated in a health system that provides skilled personnel facilities to handle emergencies when they occur. A report cited by the UN children’s agency reveals that 80 percent of maternal deaths could be averted if women had access to essential maternity and basic healthcare services. For infant and early childhood (1-4 years) mortality, the leading causes are tetanus, fevers, measles and diarrhoea. A breakdown of certified deaths in infancy from the vital registration system for the Western Area showed that tetanus is quite important in the neonatal period accounting for as much as 68% of neonatal deaths. So many other causes, medical and nutritional, are responsible for infant mortality in Sierra Leone. This obviously brings to light the veracity of the sayings of one of the country’s best media practitioners, Umaru Fofana that “Sierra Leone is the worst place to be born and the worst place to give birth.”
© Politico 05/05/15
