NIMBA COUNTY, Liberia —When Amelia Nyanamah entered the eighth month of her pregnancy her village midwife advised her to go to the nearby maternal waiting home for a safer delivery. The 38-year-old mother of four had already made the arduous 10-kilometer trip by foot from her remote village to the Lugbeyee Clinic waiting room when she gave birth to her fourth child in 2020. She thought she knew what to expect.
By Jerome Saye with New Narratives But when she reached the clinic this past November, four years later, things had changed. There was no food, no soap for washing, no clean linens on the beds, and worst of all— none of the common medicines used during labor. Amelia wanted to leave.
“Our husbands them are the one who can provide food for us,” Amelia says. Between 2010 and 2018 the government of Liberia and partners – mainly the United Nations Population Fund – built 119 maternal waiting homes across Liberia, 19 in Nimba alone. The idea was to combat Liberia’s extremely high maternal and infant death rates and to provide sexual and reproductive health care.
The midwife here says mothers are now hesitant to come preferring instead to risk giving birth with no medical help if things go wrong. Doctors and health experts say that risks the lives of both mothers and their newborn babies. It is also leading to birth injuries for babies and mothers, such as fistulas, that impact the rest of their lives.
Liberia’s alarmingly high maternal and infant mortality rat.
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