00:12For centuries, giving birth was potentially deadly for mothers and their babies.
00:19But over the last 25 years of global efforts, that changed.
00:27Maternal mortality plunged by 40%.
00:38We were on track to stop preventable deaths in childbirth.
00:42I don't know what's going on.
00:53Until now.
01:09Nigeria has had the highest maternal mortality rates in the world for years.
01:14It has repeatedly been labelled the worst place on earth to give birth.
01:20So today I'm joining healthcare worker Atinyada in her rounds of clinics in the north of the country to find
01:28out why.
01:42This struggling primary health clinic is the first and often only port of call for pregnant mothers.
01:48In the waiting room, they share their stories.
01:53Nearly all of them, like Blessing, have lost friends and family to childbirth.
01:58All of them have nearly died themselves.
02:06Blessing gave birth just a few months ago.
02:09It was not easy for me.
02:12I was very scared.
02:14I have a seizure.
02:15All my body is shaking.
02:18To the extent I even collapsed.
02:19They said how they will operate me.
02:22And I started crying because I know my husband cannot afford the money.
02:26My husband started calling his relative to help him for financial support.
02:34And then he died.
02:36Pregnant with twins, Blessing was malnourished and showing all the signs of deadly preeclampsia.
02:42But the hospital bills were the equivalent of two years' salary.
02:47Friends and family frantically crowdsourced the funds, terrified she might die like her sister did.
03:06Why didn't she go to hospital?
03:12I think it's the same financial support.
03:16I was afraid so that the same thing will not happen to you.
03:22You know, when death comes, there is nothing else you can do about it.
03:26You cry later, you have to calm down because you cannot chant in God.
03:34Aside from financial concerns, women in Nigeria struggle to access hospitals.
03:40And even when they get there, there's no guarantee there will be the resources or medics to help.
03:46In Nigeria, on average, there's only one doctor to nearly 10,000 patients.
03:52There's no doubt about those issues that have taken care of.
04:01There's no doubt about it, but we feel guilty.
04:16There's no doubt about it in a year.
04:23The fear is these conditions will only get worse amid unprecedented aid cuts from the
04:29US, the UK and other countries over the last year.
04:33I fear maternal mortality, it will be high and with the children mortality, it will increase
04:40because of the support that we are not getting.
04:48Let's go, we still have a few drugs that we still can manage and give people.
04:53So let's say in the next one year everything will be stopped out and so we're left with
04:58nothing and so the support that we can still offer now will be no more.
05:03So you just have one year left?
05:05It will not reach one year, everything in the store will finish.
05:11Across town, in another clinic, all of these issues are causing a different kind of grief.
05:20Hauer, who is pregnant with her 13th child, has lost seven babies in childbirth.
05:41Asina just lost her baby a few days ago, the third to die in childbirth.
05:53Asina just lost her baby a few days ago, the third to die in childbirth.
06:20And this is all compounded by conflict.
06:33Since 2014, Nigerian security forces have been fighting Boko Haram and other militant
06:39groups.
06:47While hiding from Boko Haram, Dorcas' newborn fell ill.
07:02Today, we met just a handful of women, and among them, 15 babies had died, and at least
07:08two to three of their siblings had died in childbirth.
07:12And that's just a tiny, tiny portion of people in two clinics.
07:18And that just shows you the extent of the problem here.
07:20And it's only going to get worse.
07:25The biggest challenge was the loss of foreign funding Nigeria relied on following Donald
07:31Trump's decision to gut USAID last year.
07:34Hundreds of projects had to close, impacting millions of people.
07:48Donald Trump made it very clear that it wasn't his responsibility to fund global health.
07:54What would you say to that comment that Nigeria should be dealing with this, not any other country?
08:01If we don't address this problem here, it may spill over to other places and it contributes
08:07to global burden.
08:08And our conscience will never be clear.
08:10The fact that there's a problem anywhere, it should be a concern for everybody, everywhere.
08:17Nigeria is just one example.
08:19This is playing out across the world, according to the United Nations.
08:24And while there are no concrete numbers yet, preliminary data is showing a rise in maternal mortality globally.
08:32In 19 countries where we work, already 11 million people lost access to sexual productive health
08:39and to gender-based violence services.
08:41What does that mean for the babies that are being born?
08:43When services get shut down, when maternity wards close, the maternal mortality rate rises.
08:50It's as simple as that.
08:52This will mean that they will have no skilled birth attendants.
08:55They will have no access to medicines that can help them survive childbirth.
09:00It's not fate.
09:01It's not biology.
09:02Women die when funding is cut, when services get shut down.
09:06There were entire healthcare systems that were propped up by USAID.
09:10Obviously that's not a great plan.
09:11Is that a mistake that the world made to rely too heavily on foreign funding and you seeing
09:17a shift away from that kind of model?
09:20Slowly but steadily, some countries were really making strong investments in their own national
09:26health systems.
09:27Just the scale and the abruptness of the cuts, it was just too much, too quick.
09:34We know what works to save women and girls.
09:37We know what works to build resilient health systems.
09:41So my appeal would be invest in innovative solutions.
09:46At this point, we are just afraid that we won't have funds that allow us to continue that
09:52work.
09:56And this is only going to get worse.
10:00Right now, the world is grappling with the highest level of armed conflict since the Second World
10:06War.
10:09This is like the perfect storm gathering.
10:11We have health systems that are stretched to the limit with less funding coming.
10:16It's a very dire scenario for the next couple of years.
10:21That perfect storm is brewing in the Central African Republic.
10:32This is Burau, a town on the country's northern border with Sudan.
10:36We have come here with the UN.
10:39The situation is so tense that we are accompanied by armed escorts and have to stay on a UN base.
10:48This country already had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world and was
10:53dealing with its own internal conflict when war erupted in neighbouring Sudan in 2023.
11:00In the only hospital just a few kilometres from the fighting, medics are overwhelmed by the
11:06influx of refugees.
11:12Amna, a Sudanese refugee, was rushed to this clinic a few hours ago.
11:17She has just lost her baby at nine months and nearly bled to death herself.
11:35This is a recurring problem.
11:38Heavily pregnant refugees arrive when it's too late.
11:47Even if they can make it here, the hospital chief says they can barely cope.
11:53Outside the wards, families are camping whilst they wait for treatment.
11:58This is because the entire hospital only has 60 beds, for a local and refugee population
12:04of nearly 40,000 people.
12:06In this life, we have only a sanitary structure, not more than 20 kilometers.
12:12As there was a reduction, the prison cell comes back to every family.
12:17And for every family who has no means, you will see that this lady could not come to the hospital.
12:22She is going to go home and when she is going home, the risk of the child's death, including
12:28the death of the child's death, will increase.
12:29You will realize that the number of children's death will increase, the number of children's death
12:35will increase.
12:36And it will be horrible.
12:38Not only for the life of the village, but for the country.
12:41Aid cuts have meant they've lost multiple members of staff.
12:45All the midwives were let go, piling pressure on Delphine, who's just an assistant, but
12:50now managing all the consultations alone.
13:05Amna and her niece Radia fled slaughter in Darfur on foot last year.
13:11Radia thinks if there were better resources, Amna's baby might have lived.
13:36At Burau's refugee camp, the UN had set up mobile maternity clinics to manage the sudden
13:42influx of refugees.
13:45But they were dismantled when the funding was cut.
13:49Marie Justine, who works for UNFPA, takes us around what is now just piles of rubble.
13:56The sage-femme worked in mobile clinic here.
13:59So they came here and did the consultations prénatales.
14:03They also did the post-natal consultations.
14:05They did the appointments here.
14:07The site here.
14:08And for me, it's also an amertume.
14:11To see that women are going on the risk of wanting to give life.
14:15It's a pain in the heart.
14:16It's a pain in the heart because when we arrived, the women approached me.
14:22They thought that I would come to be able to put in place the service.
14:27Without these mobile and temporary centres, women are dying on their way to hospital.
14:34Basayna and her family fled Darfur three years ago on donkeys.
14:38Armed groups intercepted them on the way, attempted to rape the woman, and murdered Basayna's
14:44husband when he tried to intervene.
14:47Alone, she finally made her way to this camp.
14:50The doof the people...
14:52The police changed a few days later.
14:53They were there because there were quite益ments at the airport.
14:58And then, I got off, over there, even a rent.
15:00The victims die from the airport.
15:02We were there in the airport.
15:07The authorities had aftime mission.
15:10The police were in the airport.
15:15They started flying at night because they had a station.
15:16They took home from the airport.
15:16They took home from the airport.
15:17My family came of Sudan.
15:42Bikita, who was nine months pregnant, fled Sudan just a few months ago.
16:05It just feels like humanitarian crisis layered on humanitarian crisis here.
16:09Even before a war erupted just a few kilometers from where we are, the Central African Republic
16:14was struggling with some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
16:17That's obviously only got worse.
16:20Humanitarians, nurses, doctors, refugees, everyone we've been speaking to today don't understand
16:25why when at the moment where the need is increasing, the support and the funds are decreasing.
16:31And of course, at the sharp end of that, the people who are most impacted are the mothers
16:35and their babies.
16:39The midwives who did run this maternity hospital are now jobless in the capital Bangui, increasingly
16:45frustrated that they are not able to help.
16:47Clara worked as the chief midwife in Burau Hospital with Delphine until 2025, when Trump first
16:55announced the aid cuts.
16:58Since the Sudan war erupted a few years ago, the number of pregnant women needing their services
17:03in Burau more than tripled.
17:07Dr.
17:09Dr.
17:09Dr.
17:10Dr.
17:11Dr.
17:41Dr.
17:41Dr.
17:49Dr.
17:53Dr.
17:59Dr.
18:15Dr.
18:21Dr.
18:46Dr.
18:53Dr.
19:07Dr.
19:08Dr.
19:08and the doctors rushed to try and keep her alive.
19:11But she just died in front of us.
19:13She's been on this earth for just two hours.
19:17It's normal.
19:19It's a part of our daily life.
19:29We've arrived at a stage where we have to fall back.
19:34Because if we fall back, it will be more catastrophic.
19:40And the time to intervene is now, not later.
19:46We've infused a lot of hope that finally the world would be on track
19:51to reach zero preventable maternal mortality.
19:56We know what works.
19:58They will not forgive us for having promised them a world with more dignity
20:05and our failing them.
20:12almost otherwise.
20:12Thank you for watching, and I want to know
20:13and let me know the story of God'sabis on our own time.
20:13Have a good one later.
20:13To be successful, love.
20:13Bye.
20:13Bye.
20:14Bye.
20:14Bye.
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