Bahn, Liberia: Rita arrived at the Bahn Health Center to await the delivery of her baby. 
It took her two hours on a motorbike to reach the health center.

Rita, 30, now carrying her fifth pregnancy, is being treated for malaria, which she contracted in her eighth month. During her last delivery, assisted by a traditional birth attendant, she experienced a potentially fatal complication. Luckily, she was referred to a health facility and survived.

“I am here to wait for my time to deliver because I don’t want to go through the same problem I went through the last time when I decided to deliver my baby at home with the Traditional Birth Attendant. I nearly died,” says Rita.

“I am happy to stay here, and I hope my delivery by a professional midwife will go very well. I don’t worry anymore as the midwife will help me have a safer delivery here,” she adds.

To reduce the dangers of childbirth in remote rural areas, high-risk mothers are encouraged to stay in a safe and clean ‘maternity waiting home’ to ensure skilled birth attendants assist their deliveries.

In September 2021, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, established a 24-bed maternal waiting home at the Bahn Health Center in Bahn, Nimba County, with the support of the EU-funded Spotlight Initiative. The facility provides women in the final stages of pregnancy residing in distanced communities with accommodation where they will ultimately deliver under the care of a skilled birth attendant. 

This effort is to increase skilled attended births, which seems to be working at the Bahn Health Center. “Before the Maternal Waiting Home, we used to have a monthly average delivery of 60. Now, we are having between 80 to 90 deliveries per month,” says Lorin D. Yeapeh, one of the two assigned midwives.

The Bahn Health Center serves a catchment population of about 35 thousand scattered across 28 communities.

According to the Liberia Demographic and Health Survey 2019-20, the current maternal mortality ratio is 742 deaths per 100,000 live births. While this figure represents an improvement from 2013, which was 1072 deaths per 100,000 live births, Liberia still has much work to do if it must meet the Sustainable Development Goal of bringing its maternal mortality ratio down to 70 deaths per 100,000 live births.