Partners In Health Ebola Response

Thank you for standing with Partners In Health in Sierra Leone and Liberia as we rebuild the health systems that Ebola destroyed. We're happy to share progress from Sierra Leone: we recently opened three new, cost-free birth waiting homes, which will increase access to clinic-based births and decrease instances of maternal mortality. More information is below.

The three white houses sit on a hill at the quiet edge of the city of Koidu. Four beds in each bright, airy building will welcome a total of 12 expectant mothers at a time. Shaded porches will provide a place to rest. At the back is a small examination room where nurses can perform daily checkups. In a covered outdoor kitchen nearby, a cook will prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner. While other waiting homes ask mothers to pay their own way or work off the cost of meals and accommodations by washing dishes, the PIH waiting home offers everything for free. Best of all, the home sits just a stone’s throw from Wellbody Clinic, where there hasn’t been a single maternal death in two years.

In Sierra Leone, half of all women give birth at home, and many die or lose children after suffering complications that could have been addressed at a well-equipped health clinic staffed by trained personnel. The national maternal mortality rate, 1,100 per 100,000, is one of the highest in the world. The hope is that women will come to the homes ahead of their due dates, when nothing is an emergency, and then give birth in the clinic. During the soft opening this spring and summer, the home will welcome patients from the three nearby areas with the highest maternal mortality, per the advice of local health officials. They’ll then reach out to more distant regions and welcome any mother likely to have a tricky birth.

Links:

• New Birth Waiting Homes to Welcome Expectant Mothers in Sierra L

Above: Unlike many residents of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Kadiatu survived Ebola hemorrhagic fever. Then her vision began to fail.

Our efforts to tackle the Ebola virus in West Africa were among the most challenging in our history. When the number of new Ebola cases finally dropped in Sierra Leone, it was a welcome relief.

But soon we learned of a new problem facing Ebola survivors. An increasing number suffered from an eye disease called uveitis, an inflammation of the eye that, if left untreated, can lead to blindness.

Thousands of people had survived one of the worst epidemics in the world, only to face the loss of their vision.

We needed to find as many Ebola survivors as possible and screen them for uveitis. Roughly 100 of our community health workers, many of them Ebola survivors themselves, fanned out across the district in which we work to spread the word about uveitis and its risks.

Going house to house, they convinced neighbors and community members wary of doctors and hospitals to come to an eye clinic we had established with the Ministry of Health. In just one month, we screened 277 people and successfully treated 50 more for uveitis.

Based on our success, we worked with government and international partners to expand this work nationally. In June, we coordinated screenings and treatments for Ebola survivors across the country, in every district. Again, our community health workers proved vital in finding these survivors and getting them to treatment. Ultimately, we screened 3,058 Ebola survivors and treated 379 for uveitis.

We're proud to invite you to read more about our work post-Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia -- as well as in 8 other countries around the world -- in our 2016 Annual Report, available here: https://medium.com/partnersinhealth/2016annualreport-ec30bf1a337d

Thank you for your continued partnership!

Links:

• Partners In Health 2016 Annual Report