UNICEF

Maternal Health in Guinea, March 2016

The situation for new-born babies and their mothers in Guinea is extremely tough. Of every 1,000 babies born, 123 die before their fifth birthday. For every 100,000 live births, 724 women die.

Guinea has the world’s second-highest rate of female genital mutilation (FGM), after Somalia – 97% of women between 15 and 49 have been cut. Women who have had FGM are twice as likely to haemorrhage during childbirth, and haemorrhage is the leading cause of mothers dying in Africa.
Medicine is in short supply, and health workers’ salaries rely on selling enough of it. This leads to staff shortages; most health centres have one or two health workers when they should have eight.

UNICEF, supported with donations from the Spanish Government, have been supplying training and medical supplies to health clinics throughout the country in the wake of the Ebola epidemic which ravaged the region.