Maternal Health - Saving Lives and Healing the Heart of Sierra Leone
1 in 21 women will die due to childbirth related complications in Sierra Leone!
While giving birth should be a joyous time in a woman’s life, it is always an anxious one for my fellow African women. We are all too aware of the very real possibility that we could suffer lifelong disabilities due to childbirth - or even die.
Too many children suffer the tragic loss of their mother just minutes after they are brought into this world and never know the parent who would have given them so much love and nurturing.
In Sierra Leone, for example, UNICEF reports that 1 in 21 women will die due to childbirth related complications. In the United States, the figure is 1 in 2,100 women.
That means that the women of Sierra Leone are over 100 times more likely to die due to childbirthrelated complications than the women of the United States! In addition, large numbers of African women suffer lifelong disabilities as a result of pregnancy-related complications.
Bread and Water for Africa®'s partner, Faith Healing Development Organization has four clinics that have dramatically changed the lives of the mothers in and around their respective communities (Bo, Rokel, Kenema and Bunumbu).
We've already had much success with the maternal health programmes at these clinics. In total, these four clinics serve over 15, 000 people every year! We are saving many lives! In Bunumbu, the clinic funded by Bread and Water for Africa® sees about 100 patients per week.
Maternal and infant health is the central component of the services provided, but the facility also offers basic treatments for diseases such as malaria, typhoid and AIDS (which, sadly, are common in Sierra Leone).
The Effects of Your Gift...Quadrupled
A stiffened, pale blue baby drenched in the rains of a stormy night and left to die behind a clinic toilet. The horror of this discovery still haunts the clinic nurse who fell upon the small bundle early on her morning rounds at a clinic in the rural town of Rokel in Sierra Leone.
You Can Give the Gift of a Loving Home to an African Orphan like Faith
A year ago, Faith's mother came to the doorstep of our African partners at the Lewa Children's Home in Eldoret, Kenya to tearfully beg Phyllis Keino – Bread and Water for Africa's spokesperson and the Lewa Home's Director – to care for her daughters, Faith and Rukia. Phyllis could not turn them away and never found out what happened to Faith's mother after that day, but prays that she rests in peace.
Read more: You Can Give the Gift of a Loving Home to an African Orphan like Faith
The Power of Your Nickels and Dimes
What jumps to mind when we think of the holiday season?
- Gratitude, Love and laughter with family and friends
- A vacation from homework, meetings, or deadlines
- Sharing gifts with family and friends
Drought Update
10/2011 - Once we identified a secure and effective means of providing food to the affected Turkana pastoral region in northern Kenya, we quickly moved forward in our efforts to send support.
Education is the future of Africa.
To date, Bread and Water for Africa® has funded over $1 million in total to education projects in Africa! None of this would have been possible without the support of our many kind friends throughout the United States, just like you.