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Dear Future Partner,
The All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) would like to announce its
latest initiative‐ a tour to raise resources for a maternity clinic in Sierra Leone.
With less than half of births in sub‐Saharan Africa attended by skilled health personnel, the risks during
child birth are considerable. The dangers are especially great in Sierra Leone which has the world’s
highest ratio of maternal mortality and one of the highest global rates of infant mortality.
Nurse‐Midwife Mary Koroma will be headlining AAPDEP’s Stop the Hemorrhaging! fundraising tour
during Black History Month. She has dedicated her career to combating this threat in her native Sierra
Leone‐ by setting up a simple clinic in a local village and training traditional birth attendants from nearby
communities.
As well as generating funds to build a clinic this tour aims to raise awareness of the issue of infant and
maternal mortality, which affects African women more than any other race‐ even here in the United
States.
AAPDEP is looking for individuals or groups who are interested in bringing Nurse Mary and other experts
to their city to speak about this serious problem and some of the factors behind it.
Please contact info@developmentforafrica.org or call 256‐281‐1344 to learn more about the project and
bringing Nurse Mary to your city.
Let’s work together to Stop the Hemorrhaging!
Aisha Fields, PhD
AAPDEP International Director
Nurse‐Midwife Mary Koroma
Motivated by self‐determination and willingness to use her skills for the purpose they were intended
for, Nurse Mary erected a make shift clinic in an Allentown Community. Her facility is just sticks, dirt
floor and a straw bed but she cares for the people who cannot travel the long distances to the
government hospitals. She has delivered over 3000 babies in her career and is a continued resource to
her community; a community that not only depends on her for infant and maternal care but also for
general medical care.
Nurse Mary recognizes that the problem of infant and maternal mortality is too wide spread to solve
alone. However, with access to skilled health personnel so limited in Sierra Leone many families rely on
traditional birth attendants who often do not have the training to adequately deal with complications. In
addition to the work in her Allentown clinic, Nurse Mary provides support and training to a network of
birth attendants in order to ensure that as many women as possible have access to the care they
deserve.
Her dedication and expertise serve as an example and AAPDEP is proud to partner with her to further
the dream of self‐determination for African women and children.
Infant and Maternal Mortality: A war on African mothers and babies
Child birth should be a miraculous time in the lives of any family. Unfortunately, in practice this
fails to be the case for many African families. Instead African mothers are often faced with the
heartbreaking knowledge that either they or their babies may die during a process which is
meant to give life.
Women in sub‐Saharan Africa are more likely to die during child birth than those in any other
region, with a rate 100 times greater than that of ‘developed’ countries. Babies in sub‐Saharan
Africa are also least expected to live until the age of one‐ with almost 1 in 10 infants not
surviving, a figure which does not take into account the disproportionate number of
miscarriages and still births. With less than half of births attended by skilled health personnel,
many mothers and babies are dying from complications which could be easily dealt with given
the right skills and equipment. Since hospitals are often inaccessible, both due to physical
distance and a lack of funds to pay for services, many families rely on traditional birth
attendants who often do not have the training to deal with difficulties.
Data source: UN MDGs; Map by AAPDEP
The AAPDEP Fundraising Tour:
The danger of infant and maternal mortality is especially great in Sierra Leone, which remains
impoverished despite its wealth of natural and human resources. Sierra Leone has the world’s
highest ratio of maternal mortality with 1 in 8 women at risk of dying during childbirth. It also
has one of the highest global rates of infant mortality with 123 of every 1000 babies not
surviving to the age of one.
Nurse‐Midwife Mary Koroma, who will be headlining a fundraising tour in the US during Black
History Month, has dedicated her career to combating this threat‐ by setting up a simple clinic
in a local village and training traditional birth attendants from nearby communities. Funds
raised from the Stop the Hemorrhaging! Tour will be used to build a clinic in Sierra Leone.
AAPDEP will be bringing Nurse Mary to the United States to train with African midwives here on
the basic techniques that could mean the difference between life and death for mothers and
babies in the villages in which she works. Nurse Mary will then return to Sierra Leone to pass on
this knowledge to her network of birth attendants.
Maternal Mortality in the United States:
Far from being an issue only facing Africans on the continent, maternal mortality plagues
African women wherever they are located. Despite the stolen wealth of the United States,
which ranks it as the world’s richest country, women in America face a greater lifetime risk
during childbirth than those in 40 other countries‐ and it is women of color who bear the brunt
of this risk. African women in the US are four times more likely to die of pregnancy related
complications than white women, with African babies dying at more than twice the rate of
white infants. In Washington DC, which has a majority black population, women are almost 30
times more likely to die than in Maine. Many of these deaths are attributable to systemic
barriers to healthcare in the US, with Amnesty International, the human rights organization
stating that nearly half of these maternal deaths are preventable.
Self‐Determination for African Families:
So how do we overcome these high rates of infant and maternal mortality and combat what is
essentially the most significant human rights violation impacting African families? For many
charity organizations and even governments, the response is to implement isolated projects
aimed at relieving these conditions in certain areas. While this strategy may impart a
temporary reprieve it does little to combat the underlying causes of this war being waged on
African women and babies. A charity approach does not address the contradiction at the core
of this issue. On a continent with so much wealth and resources‐ how can women and children
still be dying of easily preventable complications? Where does this wealth go if it is not being
directed at the most basic needs of a community? The All African People’s Development and
Empowerment Project recognizes that African self‐determination is the only sustainable option
for reversing these conditions.
AAPDEP is looking for individuals or groups who are interested in bringing Nurse Mary and
other experts to their city to speak about this serious problem and further explore these
contradictions. Let’s work together to Stop the Hemorrhaging!
Please contact info@developmentforafrica.org or call 256‐281‐1344 to learn more about the
project and bringing Nurse Mary to your city.
Learn more about AAPDEP’s work at www.developmentforafrica.org
19 Feb 2010
"Maternal mortality is a good indicator of a country's healthcare situation and of the inequalities between
men and women", José Luis Alvarez, the lead author of this study and a researcher at the URCJ in Madrid,
tells SINC.
The objective of this research, published in the journal BMC Public Health was to quantify the specific
weight of maternal mortality in sub-Saharan African and to determine the healthcare, cultural and
economic factors involved in this.
Data obtained from 45 African countries between 1997 and 2006 from the World Health Organization
(WHO), the World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) were studied.
"Despite the significant differences between countries, the number of maternal deaths was high in all of
them, at an average of 885 deaths for each 100,000 births, but these women are not dying as a result of any
disease, but just from normal biological processes", says Álvarez.
The main causes of death are haemorrhaging (34%), infection (10%), pre-eclampsia (9%) and obstruction
during birth (4%). These figures differ from those in industrialised countries, where death from
haemorrhaging accounts for 13% of deaths. There are also indirect causes that, although they are not
complications relating to the birth itself, become worse over the course of the pregnancy and cause 20% of
the deaths.
The results of this study show that an effective and efficient health system, especially during pregnancy
and birth, are fundamental cornerstones of maternal health, along with access to clean drinking water.
The research team also observed a positive relationship with economic and educational factors, leading the
authors to say "it will be very difficult to improve health without taking both these factors into
consideration". "Education, above all for women, is higher in countries with a lower maternal mortality
rate", concludes Álvarez.
In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the number of women who died during pregnancy or shortly
after birth at 529,000 (almost one maternal death per minute), of which less than 1% occurred in
industrialised countries. The majority of the causes of these deaths have been medically preventable for
decades, and do not usually occur during the birth itself, but in the days afterwards.
The main reasons why pregnant women do not attend health centres to receive maternal-infant care,
especially in rural areas, are the cost, fear, having previously received poor treatment, the waiting times,
shame and the distance to the closest health centre.
According to the United Nations, the three countries with the highest maternal death rates are India
(136,000), Nigeria (37,000) and Afghanistan (20,000). The highest maternal mortality rates are in Sierra
Leone and Afghanistan, with 2,000 and 1,900 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, respectively.
The lowest rates are in Australia and Iceland, at four and 10, respectively.
In 2003, the WHO, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) produced the world
maternal mortality index. The average in Africa is 400 deaths for every 100,000 live births, in
industrialised countries 20 per 100,000, and in developing countries 440 per 100,000.