BIRTH & DEATH Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone "Every minute, every hour, pregnant women die in Sierra Leone." -Amadu Sesay, brother Jemelleh Saccoh arrives with her aunt at Princess Christian Maternity Hospital in Freetown for an emergency C-section due to pregnancy complications. Later that day she was dead. Sierra Leone has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world: one in eight women die in childbirth, compared with one in 4,800 in the United States and one in 48,000 in Ireland, according to the UN. Many deaths could be preventable with basic medical care, which is often absent after a decade of civil war that decimated an already fragile infrastructure. It is a silent killer, off the map of world concern. Poverty, cultural influences and chronic deprivation contribute to the issue alongside an alarming rate of infant mortality. Halls of these hospitals-of-last-resort in West Africa echo with wails of grief as families mourn a lifeless mother, a stillborn child, or both. Among the victims, Jemelleh Saccoh - cause of death postpartum hemorrhage. A day earlier, Adama Sannoh was diagnosed with preeclampsia and took her final breath on a tattered mattress in Ward 2, her baby dying with her in the womb. Her mother wept as she viewed her body, "Oh my darling, goodbye."