Surviving birth
Valente Inziku, whose wife Jennifer died in childbirth in Arua, Uganda (photography: Tadej Znidarcic)
Researchers at one of the busiest maternity hospitals in the world aim to help more women survive complications giving birth.
Obstetrician Dr Annettee Nakimuli and colleagues look after up to 28,000 births a year at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.
Every day, 300 pregnant women visit the hospital antenatal clinic. Around 100 women are on the labour ward, and 40 of these will have complications – obstructed labour, haemorrhage, sepsis or pre-eclampsia – requiring up to 25 emergency caesarean sections to be carried out.
“When women come to the labour ward they hope to come out with the best of it – they hope to come out with a live baby, and come out alive themselves. But women go to hospital with mixed feelings – they’ve seen others die before them, so there’s a tendency to think of maternal death as something inevitable rather than avoidable,�