The new project is being undertaken in memory of Don Luigi Mazzucato, CUAMM’s director from 1955 to 2008, who passed away last November.
An agreement has just been signed in Freetown by Don Dante Carraro, director of Doctors with Africa CUAMM, and Dr. Philip Koroma, health director of the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital (PCMH), marking the official beginning of CUAMM’s intervention in the country’s most important maternity hospital for the management of obstetric emergencies.
«We’ve just signed an agreement in the office of the director, Dr. Koroma, to partner with the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital», Don Carraro explains. «Behind us was a blackboard covered with numbers, a bulletin from the war being waged every day in Sierra Leone’s largest maternity ward. Last month alone there were 447 deliveries, 152 Cesarean sections, 11 mothers who died of complications during pregnancy or childbirth and 36 babies who died during labor. It’s a massacre, much worse even than Ebola, which is thankfully now over; a small army of midwives, clinicians, nurses and logisticiansis battling against it daily. We’ll begin work on 1 March with two senior gynecologists, a junior one and a technician. The means are scarce but we’re going to take on this challenge with experience, passion and tenacity. We’ll need everyone’s help».
In Sierra Leone moving forward post-Ebola is today’s watchword, as well as the country’s key challenge.
