Written by Michelle Bryant as told by: Monica Manely
Monica’s passion is for the pregnant mothers of Liberia. Liberia is a country in West Africa that has endured 14 years of civil war with a population of around five million. In 2006 Liberia had the highest death rate in maternal modality in the world. As one of the victims of Africa’s modality she experienced what it felt like to not have care during pregnancy. As a young mother who lost two children before birth, she is confident that with the proper prenatal care she would have completed a healthy full-term pregnancy and her babies would have survived. “One of my ultrasounds showed my baby was dead. I had to do a C-Section to deliver the dead baby inside of me that had been that way for about 24 hours, and I had no idea. Many of the pregnant women only receive folic acid and iron during their pregnancies. But this basic prenatal care is often isolated to the major cities, leaving the surrounding villages without this option,” she told us.
This tremendous loss brewed a passion in Monica, and she is currently working to change this protocol. Monica has formed a team, budget and organization that is building a facility to train midwives and medical personnel for a health care center for pregnant women. This would allow medical professionals to travel to various villages and offer prenatal care to the mothers, as well as mothers to come, to visit the center for their care.
Although Liberia has hospitals that do deliver babies, it only provides basic medical care. It offers no prenatal care or supplements to new mothers and is very limited and extremely understaffed for the overall various needs of the Liberian population, therefore ongoing prenatal care ranks low on the list of treatments. The first of hopefully many pregnancy counseling centers for women, which will open on February 22, 2020, does not offer delivery of babies but provides trained midwives to treat and care for these women during their entire pregnancies.
When an expectant mother comes to the center, they are given a “Moses bag” which contains twelve items, to include prenatal vitamins, supplements and more. The center provides resources, advice and before, during and after care for their mothers. After childbirth, women are educated and provided birth control options, as well as immunizations for their baby. Family planning classes are made available to both men and women as Liberia is amongst the polygamous countries in Africa, and often one woman can have many children by different fathers.
The center is strictly donation run. Supplements, medical supplies, diapers, etc. are gathered from across the United States and sent to their headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina where Monica resides. She then travels to Liberia several times a year bringing the supplies. In addition to material donations such as the prenatal vitamins and supplements, monetary donations are always appreciated as the cost of travel, health care professionals, immunizations, etc. as well as is the expense to ship can be extensive.
To donate or learn more about this outreach visit: www.pregnantcarecharities.org
Address :
9608 Dalphon Jones Drive, Charlotte, NC 28213
(980) 319-0781