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To contact the Maternity Africa by email please click here.

Supported by the;
The Barbara May Foundation
ABN is 35 141 248 900
PO Box 2371
Bowral, NSW 2576

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Latest News

It has been well over one year of service by volunteers in Mota hospital Ethiopia. The number of women dying has decreased by 90%!

On Oct 24th the new maternity hospital in Afar was officially opened by the Australian Ambassador to Ethiopia, HE Lisa Filepetto. Soon after the first baby was born in the hospital, a girl named Barbara.

We have opened new sites in Debre Tabor, Ethiopia and Bahir Dar Ethiopia. 
 

Killer Statistics

1. Every year at least 540,000 women die from pregnancy, almost all in the developing world. The maternal death rate in the western world is 1–12 for every 100,000 births!

2. For every death there are at least 30 women who sustain injuries from trying to deliver their child. That is 16.2 million women getting injuries each year. This compares in the western world where the risk is so low, that we all expect to have no injuries to our mothers or babies at all.

3. In the Afar area of Ethiopia where the Barbara May Foundation is supporting a new hospital, it is estimated that 1 in 12 women would die during their lifetimes from pregnancy.

4. Almost all of this can be prevented with provision of simple, safe and cheap medical care.

Welcome

Welcome to the web site of Maternity Africa. It is a local organisation in Ethiopia supported by the Barbara May Foundation in Australia.

Each day across the world countless women give birth to their babies, most of whom do not have access to good safe medical care as we do in the west. The unfortunate truth is most have no access to any medical care during their births. As a result hundreds of thousands of women die each year and many more babies die. Of those who survive millions more mothers and their babies are left with permanent injuries – all because they wanted a family.

It is a blight on the world that in this day and age when there is more wealth and medical knowledge than ever before, that so many of our women and babies are dying each year. Almost all of these deaths and injuries are completely preventable.

Maternity Africa with the support of the Barbara May Foundation based in Australia is seeking to help this situation.

We have commenced placing volunteer midwives and obstetricians into hospitals around the developing world where there are currently no safe medical services for women.

In places where there are no hospitals or medical services, we seek to provide a safe three tiered system for women to give birth.

We have trained and equipped birth attendants in villages to manage women in their pregnancies and deliver low risk cases.

Appropriate cases will be referred to waiting areas where women come later in their pregnancies. These areas have health workers to care for them and supervise their deliveries or transport them by ambulance to the third tier – a maternity hospital.

The hospitals have volunteer obstetricians and midwives to care for the patients and also train the local health workers.