Haja Zainab Bangura: Sierra Leone's tireless Minister of Health.

摘要

When Haja Zainab Bangura, Sierra Leone's Health and Sanitation Minister, returned home from a trip to Ethiopia a month ago, she was exhausted and went right to bed. In the middle of the night, her phone rang. A friend was in labour at the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital in Freetown, and she was bleeding profusely. Bangura made some calls and a Ministry consultant, who was a medical doctor, arrived at the hospital just as she did. They learned her friend had fallen off a hospital bed, bled to death, and lost her baby. Moments later, Bangura encountered another distressed woman in labour nearby, just outside the operating room. No doctor was on call. The Ministry consultant stepped in, delivered a stillborn baby, but saved the mother's life. In the span of roughly an hour, the Minister had witnessed three deaths.