Shenya Koroma, Telu Road, Kenema

I live at Telu Road. I have been there for 22 years. My family has benefited a lot from the services provided by the Mamboma Maternal Child Health Post on Blama Road, especially my two kids and me. As illiterate farmers, this centre serves as our own school. Apart from the regular treatment given to us, they also engage us in community health talks on how to prevent ourselves from becoming ill.

Shenya Koroma, Telu Road, Kenema

We are also taught how to take good care of ourselves, our children, our environment and even how to attend to our husbands (laughs).  In addition, we are taught how to prevent pregnancy and reasonably space our children. We have never been accustomed to such services before.

There are also regular clinics for us lactating/suckling mothers on Saturdays where our children are registered, weighed and immunized against common childhood diseases such as polio and small pox, among other services. Moreover, there are regular clinics for pregnant women on Fridays.

This has been particularly helpful because before now we either had to trek on foot or be placed in hammocks for several miles to receive medical attention from qualified personnel.

Even there, if you don’t have the money to pay no one cared about you. In fact, in most cases when there were emergencies we either sought the services of traditional healers, midwives or bought drugs from “Pepe doctors” (illegal drug peddlers).

Let me open up a secret to you: at Mamboma, even when some of our colleagues don’t have the registration fee the nurses still attend to them and give them time to pay later.

 We are really proud of them. Had they not been as closed to us as they are,  I wonder how many children would have been safely delivered and how many of us, their mothers would have been alive and healthy today.

I hope everyone all over the country is as lucky as we are.