Doctor’s at Guy’s and St Thomas’ are helping local women survive in one of the most dangerous countries to get pregnant.
As many as one in seventeen women in the West African country of Sierra Leone will die in pregnancy or childbirth, largely because of a lack of equipment and doctors.
There was also a huge rise in teenage pregnancies during the Ebola crisis of 2014/2015, according to the World Bank, when schools closed and people lost out on work. Some 18,000 girls became pregnant in this period, largely because of sexual assault and food exchanged for sex. Nearly one in three women aged between 20 and 24 had given birth by the age of eighteen, and three per cent had had a child by the age of fifteen.
A team of seven Guy’s and St Thomas’ doctors, midwives and researchers went out to Sierra Leone to work with local doctors, community leaders and policy makers to help solve the problem of people dying after falling pregnant.
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The team visited for two weeks in March and April and set up the following schemes:
- A mentoring initiative for teenage mothers from pregnancy through to one-year post-birth
- Research on how to predict complications from haemorrhage and sepsis in pregnant women living in rural areas
- Research to show the benefits of a medical device used in the NHS to detect kidney injury in pregnant women
- A scheme to use a Guy’s and St Thomas’ that detects high blood pressure and shock in pregnant women
- Support for three local PhD students and more than twenty researchers, to help build up maternal health capacity
Professor Andrew Shennan, consultant obstetrician at Guy’s and St Thomas’, who is leading the project, said: “I’m very proud and thankful to our staff. They are extremely passionate and committed to helping improve care for pregnant women and babies in Sierra Leone.
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“Becoming pregnant in Sierra Leone can be life-threatening. Many communities live in rural areas where there is a shortage of basic medical supplies, pregnancy monitoring equipment and healthcare workers. This means that women with anything but the most straightforward pregnancies could be in danger. Pregnant teenagers also face discrimination and often don’t seek medical care due to fear.
“It’s very important to us that we work with women and communities in Sierra Leone and that they’re involved in decisions about their care. Every woman and child no matter where they live deserves to have access to life-saving healthcare.”
The team are going back this summer and have been three times since September last year.