Maternal Health

MSF provides services for mothers and newborns in Lesotho, where a high prevalence of HIV and limited access to care can make giving birth dangerous.

Obstetric fistulas affect some two million women worldwide. MSF is training gynecologists to treat this devastating condition.

MSF is providing care to mothers in the remote Ethiopian region of Aroressa, where health centers and qualified medical personnel are scarce.

Belgian midwife Cathy Janssens, who recently returned from a MSF assignment in Syria, reflects on the highs and lows of her experience.

In North Darfur, MSF is helping pregnant mothers avert serious health risks that can occur before, during and, after a baby is born. 

MSF's Betty Raney describes how she and her team reduced maternal deaths in Sierra Leone through emergency obstetric care.

Betty Raney and Yvonne Nzomukunda describe MSF's efforts to prevent maternal and infant deaths in childbirth in Sierra Leone, where the health system is still recovering from war.

MSF and SINA working together to provide free medical care for residents of Karachi's Machar Colony.

Operational research from MSF projects in Burundi and Sierra Leone indicate that it is possible to achieve a rapid and substantial decrease in maternal deaths of up to 74 percent by providing access to emergency obstetric care.

Ensuring pregnant women have timely access to emergency obstetric care has reduced maternal deaths by as much as 74 percent in parts of Burundi and Sierra Leone.

MSF is providing health care to mothers and children on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital.

MSF will resume medical activities in its maternity hospital in Khost Province, Afghanistan, which were suspended following an explosion in the hospital in April 2012.

Giving birth in Somalia is incredibly dangerous, but it's made slightly less so by the huge efforts of MSF’s Somali staff. 

This update details MSF's recent activities in Africa's Sahel region, where widespread malnutrition and water shortages are exacerbating the outbreaks of diseases like meningitis.

MSF suspended activities in its recently-opened maternity hospital in Afghanistan's Khost Province after an explosion inside the compound injured seven people, including one child.

MSF suspended activities in its recently-opened maternity hospital in Afghanistan's Khost Province after an explosion inside the compound injured seven people, including one child.

The World Health Organization recently issued new guidelines to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The recommendations include getting more women on treatment sooner and staying on it for life. The guidelines have the support of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF.

An MSF field coordinator in Najaf discusses perinatal and obstetric care in the one of the region's largest hospitals.

An MSF field coordinator in Najaf discusses perinatal and obstetric care in the one of the region's largest hospitals.

This special report details MSF’s approach to delivering quality emergency obstetric care to prevent maternal death.

Every 90 seconds a woman dies from childbirth or from a pregnancy-related complication; hundreds of thousands of lives can be saved.

MSF has opened a new maternity hospital in eastern Khost province to provide pregnant women with high-quality care.

"We fear that the poorest patients will not be able to pay for treatment or will be afraid to seek care."

Dr. Faiza Adan Abdirahman, the medical doctor in charge of the pediatric department at Istarlin hospital in Galgaduud, discusses the situation in the area.

On August 18, MSF officially inaugurated its new specialized emergency obstetric care hospital in Port-au-Prince.

An interview with Hussein Sheikh Qassim is the Medical Activities Manager in the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Marere, southern Somalia.

Today, a decade after a peace agreement was signed, there is only one functioning hospital for a population of around 200,000. 

Doctors and other hospital staff in Libya are highly dedicated, but there is a lack of inpatient capacity in all areas of care. MSF is helping to fill the gaps in surgery, obstetrics, and neonatal care.

Thirty-five seconds. That’s all it took for an earthquake to shatter the lives of millions of Haitians on January 12, 2010.

Hannah Megacz, a New York City-based nurse, has worked with MSF in Cameroon, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, for much of 2010, in Dadaab, Kenya, in the Dagahaley Refugee Camp, the largest of three refugee camps set up in the 1990s for refugees fleeing war in Somalia. Originally established to accommodate 90,000 individuals, the camps are currently struggling to support 300,000 refugees. More than 100,000 now live in Dagahaley alone, in fact. The needs are significant and the resources far too few, especially as it pertains to food, water, sanitation, and shelter. MSF has spoken out about the need to provide more care for these refugees, something that seems ever more urgent as the numbers look likely to continue increasing.

This past January, the people of southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly for independence, and in July the world will see the birth of a new country. It will be a country that faces enormous challenges—not least the urgent medical and humanitarian needs of millions of people.

After evaluating the needs in and around Peshawar, MSF decided to build a 30-bed reference hospital dedicated solely to women.

Large parts of the population of Kaabong suffer from violence and chronic neglect—70 percent cannot access health care.

Obstetric fistulas are one of the most serious consequences of obstructed labor. An estimated 2 million women in developing countries are living with fistulas, many on the margins of society.

One in seven women dies from pregnancy or pregnancy-related complications. One of every seven children dies before they reach the age of five.

While the focus now on the political situation in southern Sudan, the region remains in the midst of a humanitarian and medical crisis,

Liza Ramlow, a 62-year-old midwife from Massachusetts, has been working in Nigeria since this past May in some of the most deprived slums in Lagos.

In the past six months, MSF has cared for hundreds of women facing complicated deliveries at its emergency obstetrics program in Balochistan.

An interview with Melania Raga Bejarano, head nurse in the maternity ward of San Francisco Asis Hospital in Colombia’s Chocó department.

There are few health care options for Somalis and very few international organizations present. Before MSF arrived in Jamaame, there were only traditional healers and shops that sold drugs.

Intense fighting among various armed groups claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians and displaced thousands more in Somalia in the first half of 2009. The town of Jamaame, in a remote area of southern Somalia’s Lower Juba region, is one area where MSF has been able to provide ongoing medical services.

MSF Nurse Colette Kerr describes her experience in Busia, a rural district in western Kenya, where MSF runs an HIV/AIDS project. Kerr oversaw the prevention of mother-to-child transmission program for pregnant women and new mothers.

In 2007 a group of 11 women suffering from vesico-vaginal (VVF) fistulas approached MSF nurse Esther Moring and her medical team in eastern Chad, asking for treatment. In order to help those women and countless others with fistulas in eastern Chad, Moring and an MSF team initiated a pilot fistula surgery program. Here, Moring describes what fistulas are and why starting this project was so important.

For 21 years, the south of Sudan was the country’s hotbed of conflict, until a peace agreement was signed in 2005. However, the emergency is far from over.

For the past nine months, Lisa Errol, a midwife from New Zealand, has been treating pregnant women at the MSF clinic in a camp for internally displaced people in the Liberian town of Salala in Bong county.