00:00Penina Zawadi went into hospital to give birth to her son, but never made it home.
00:05An hour after she was taken in for a C-section, her mother, Esther Berenda, was handed her
00:12newborn grandson.
00:13Zawadi, however, did not return.
00:16After severe bleeding, she was transferred for emergency surgery but died in ICU days
00:21later on June 23rd.
00:25She did not move her hands or open her eyes for three days, and at around 6pm on that
00:31Tuesday, she died.
00:36Halima Ramadhan died in March while giving birth to twins.
00:40A week past her due date, her family says they still don't know why.
00:44During three weeks in intensive care, her mother says nurses repeatedly asked her to buy more
00:49medicine with little information about Halima's condition.
00:53She was just 27.
00:56I did not expect a big government hospital would lack medication to give to people who would
01:02undergo an operation.
01:03Anyway, I said to myself that sometimes things can lack and it's okay to chip in.
01:09That was the first instance in the hospital whereby there was no medication and I went
01:15out to buy it myself.
01:16To my dismay, after being transferred to Kilifi, Kilifi hospital was even worse.
01:22Severe bleeding, obstructed labour and pregnancy-related high blood pressure are among the leading
01:28killers.
01:29Now donor funding cuts are making the crisis even harder for Kenya's poorest communities.
01:34Right now as a country, we are not doing so well. Our figures are very high. We are at
01:40355 per 100,000 life births. For seven county governments, things are changing. We are doing
01:46so much in terms of intervention to reduce preventable maternal death. But as a country,
01:52we have 26 counties that have high burden of maternal and perinatal death.
01:57Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's fastest growing population, but at the same time accounts
02:03for 70 per cent of global maternal deaths. Around 180,000 pregnancy deaths are recorded
02:09every year across the continent.
