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Sierra Leone, West Africa has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world. A Sierra Leonean woman has a shocking 1:8 lifetime risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. 

When women die in pregnancy and childbirth, the very fabric of the family and the community is destroyed. These women die from wholly treatable causes like hemorrhage, obstructed labor, and infection. Often, these deaths occur because a proper medical facility offering emergency obstetrical services by trained personnel does not exist or is simply too far away. Without access to a proper obstetrical facility, appropriately equipped and staffed, these women often labor for days and days in their local villages, attended only by an improperly trained birth attendant.

Consequently they often labor until either they die, the baby dies, or both. Those that survive are often left with devastating fistulae, which make them wholly incontinent and ostracized from their community. Timely access to quality obstetrical care can help to end this needless tragedy.

Pregnancy and childbirth must not result in the unnecessary deaths of Sierra Leone’s mothers, wives, sisters, daughters. This crisis cannot simply be ignored; these women's lives are not just superfluous. I believe that we can and must do something to stop this. We all live in one world. The women of Sierra Leone need our help.