Less than $50,000 has drastically reduced maternal deaths for a community of over 30,000 people. (Photo by Vivian Glyck)

My hero, New York Times op-ed writer Nick Kristof, has again, told it like it really is. While traveling in Sierra Leone this week, he stopped at a rural hospital and wrote, among other things,

“One of the most dangerous things an African woman can do is become pregnant.”

When I first arrived at Bishop Asili Hospital in Luwero, Uganda, in May 2006, I couldn’t believe that a pregnant woman could come to this hospital and be turned away in the midst of an emergency obstetrical situation because the hospital just couldn’t treat her. I witnessed with my own eyes the horror in a young mother’s eyes as she knew that this was her death sentence.

It just about bent my brain to think of how serene and pre-meditated my son’s birth by c-section had been — the doting staff let me pick the music in the O.R., made sure the lights wouldn’t glare too directly in my baby’s eyes when he was extracted, and so on. At the end of it all, my newborn son would have died of a collapsed lung if he couldn’t be rushed into neonatal intensie care and administered oxygen and 24-hour care.

I am so joyful to say that in just 2 short years, the hiring of a skilled surgeon, a small clean room, and some key surgical supplies have drastically reduced the incidence of maternal mortality for a community of over 30,000 people. We have still got a long way to go since we need a real, sterile operating and recovery room, blood transfusions, and so much more.

But as Dr. Charles Lwanga, chief and only doctor and surgeon at Bishop Asili says, “We need to think big and start small.” And so we have!

Vivian Glyck, Executive Director, www.JustLikeMyChild.org