Sunday Times Review.

Extreme Midwifery.

Midwife Suzanne Saunder Bledell from Sutton, Coldfield took a trip that ended up being the most challenging two weeks of her life. In the BBCs new series, toughest place to be a, Suzanne visits Liberia, South Africa to try her job in completely different surroundings and in the toughest of conditions. Seven years ago Liberia had the worst civil war in African history. 250,000 died and child soldiers as young as ten had control of who lived and who died. Liberia has been struggling to rebuild their country since. At the beginning of the episode Suzanne delivers a baby called Jessica, her mum describes childbirth as ‘The best six hours of my life.’ Skip forward two weeks, women in Liberia are having stillbirths, babies without any means of antibiotics and dyeing without medicines to save lives. The conditions the midwifes have to work in show a lot of strength and character, in some cases it can take 2 hours to get to work, and once they’re there they are under a lot of pressure, two midwifes to seven patients leaves them struggling with a heavy work load. Suzanne, bares such different culture issues in terms of food, living and equipment, the hospital had two incubators but were unaware how to use them until Suzanne showed them. Suzanne particularly struggles when one women has a still birth, although this is a frequent occurrence for women in Liberia Suzanne worries about the lack of sensitivity when the women is left to stay in the same room as women who are having abortions, their babies and someone with diarrhea. Suzanne has many different emotions, happiness of her welcome and the strength of community and family in Liberia, but it becomes too much when a woman asks her to take one of her children because she can’t afford to look after them anymore.