-As it Improves Access to Skilled Birth Attendance in Rural Nimba
By: Williett Wonyenneh
ZORGOWEE, Nimba County – four days ago, Princess Yeanuah arrived at the Zorgowee Maternal Waiting Home（MWH） to await the delivery of her baby. It took her about six hours (walk) to reach the MWH at Zorgowee.
25-year-old princess is currently expecting her third child and is under the care of a midwife at the facility as she awaits delivery.
“I am here to wait for my time to deliver because this place helping we the big belle (pregnant women) because when we (are) here, the midwives can look after us good,” Says Princess. “I know my delivery here will go very well because the nurses (are) taking good care of us here. I don’t worry anymore,” she added.
She urged expectant mothers to utilize the maternal waiting facility in Zorgowee, as well as similar establishments throughout Nimba, to ensure the well-being of both themselves and their babies.
The Maternal Waiting Home at the Zorgowee Clinic has been operational since 2015 and was collectively built by the community, the Government of Liberia, and partnering organizations. This six-bedroom facility is equipped with 24-hour electricity, bathrooms, and beds, providing a safe haven for expectant mothers awaiting childbirth.
To mitigate the risks associated with childbirth in rural Liberia, expectant mothers in their final trimester are encouraged to reside in the hygienic and secure Maternal Home. This ensures that skilled birth attendants are readily available to assist with delivery.
The Maternal Waiting Home at the Zorgowee Clinic offers lodging for pregnant women in advanced stages of gestation who reside in remote areas, providing a safe environment for them to give birth under the supervision of trained medical professionals.
Grace Dahn, a 29-year-old resident of Zualay, a town 25 kilometers away is one of many expectant mothers utilizing this facility. She is pleased that pregnant women from both near and far now have access to a secure environment to await the arrival of their newborns near the health center.
“This place is giving we the pregnant women that live far off the opportunity to come and wait here for our time to deliver because the distance from our area(s) to come here (is) far for (a) woman in pain to walk,” she said.
While Grace appreciates the presence of the maternal waiting home, she is distressed by the consistent unavailability of vital medications at the health facility. She is urging the Liberian government to allocate more resources towards ensuring adequate medication supplies at health facilities nationwide, particularly for pregnant women, to decrease maternal mortality rates in Liberia. “The only big problem here, most of the time the doctors (nurses) can tell us no medicine, she said. “They can give our men papers (prescriptions) to go buy the medicine,” she disclosed.
Lorina Johnson is the Officer in Charge of the healthcare facility. She acknowledges that pregnant women are utilizing the Maternal Waiting Home, yet she also affirms Grace’s claim that the facility is encountering significant challenges due to frequent shortages of medications, particularly those used to treat malaria.
“Women don’t give birth at home again; they are encouraged by the services we provide, every morning nurses do each of them vital signs, blood pressure, and other assessments, ” she said. ”At times we give them prescriptions and they buy their own drug because we don’t have,” She added.
OIC Johnson furthered that the facility serves over 35 patients daily. But she says when she along with her team raises the issue of drug stock-out, they are often told by authorities at the national level that “drug shortage is a nationwide issue.”
Zorgowee Clinic caters to a catchment population of over ten thousand people from ten surrounding communities.
The endeavors made by the Liberian government through the Ministry of Health in collaboration with various partners, to enhance the prevalence of skilled attendance during childbirth appear to be yielding positive results at the Zorgowee Clinic.
“Because of the presence of the Maternal Waiting Home at the health facility, we do between 30 to 40 successful deliveries here in a month,” Suah Vankpabah, Chief Midwife at the Zorgowee Clinic.
On March 9, 2011, the administration of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf unveiled an ambitious five-year strategy aimed at reducing maternal and newborn mortality rates in Liberia. This endeavor led to the establishment of numerous Maternal Waiting Homes throughout the country by the Government of Liberia with support from various partners.
In September 2020, the UNFPA, with support from the European Union, completed the construction of an additional 24-bedroom maternal waiting home at the Bahn Health Center in Bahn, Nimba County.
Despite these efforts, the 2023 United Nations Joint Mission report on Liberia, unveiled in May of this year, reveals a disturbingly elevated maternal mortality rate in the country. Dr. Anshu Banerjee, the head of the Mission, underscored the severity of the circumstances and highlighted the necessity for prompt measures to address the escalating maternal and newborn mortality rates in the country. “We have 1,100 women dying every year due to maternal motility, for newborn deaths, we have seen that there is an increased trend for newborn deaths in Liberia, that’s very worrying, and the number of newborn deaths is at 8,500,” he said. “The other worrying trend that we have seen in Liberia is that the number of stillbirths is actually much higher than the newborn deaths and under five motility offers 22,500 children that are dying every year,” Dr. Banerjee disclosed.
To improve the health situation in Liberia, He recommends that access to quality health care is a must. “There is a huge agenda around improving quality healthcare, improving access, improving skills, and ensuring that commodities and supplies are there.”
This unfavorable discovery by the UN Joint Mission was made just after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said in 2023, it [USAID] along with Global Fund donated to Liberia 14 Million US dollars’ worth of life-saving medicines and other health commodities to the people of Liberia.
But USAID’s Mission Director Jim Wright expressed frustration that the donated medicine often does not reach Liberians who really need it due to fraud and mismanagement.
This revelation prompted USAID to launch a national-level campaign on April 11, aimed at improving access to and availability of donated medicines for the people of Liberia.
By mid-April, the Agency said it had discovered that “90% of pharmacies in Liberia are selling stolen medicine donated by aid organizations.”
This story was produced under the Female Journalists Association of Liberia (FeJAL) Women in Newsroom Leadership program. Funding was provided by USAID through Internews, as part of Year III of its Media Activity Program. The funder did not influence the contents of this story.
