The woman is lying on the floor outside the maternity department; her large pregnant belly slopes to one side as her back arches, face muscles clench and a violent, jerking convultion resumes. It's past midnight, the air is warm and humid, hanging heavily around us. The two men who had squeezed her on to the back of their mototbike stand silently, staring; everyone is staring...
***
Hailed as "a must-read for our times" (Aminatta Forna) and "eye-opening, kind, and inspirational" (Adam Kay), Belly Woman tells the story of what happens to pregnant women when a humanitarian catastrophe strikes.
May, 2014. Sierra Leone is ranked the country with the highest death rate of pregnant women in the world. The same month, Ebola crosses in from neighbouring Guinea. Arriving a few weeks later, Dr Benjamin Black finds himself at the centre of an exponential Ebola outbreak. From impossible decisions on the maternity ward to moral dilemmas at the Ebola Treatment Centres: one mistake, one error of judgment, could spell disaster.
An eye-opening work of reportage and advocacy, Belly Woman chronicles the inside journey through an unfolding global health crisis and the struggle to save the lives of young mothers. As Black reckons with the demons of the past, he must try to learn the lessons for a different, more resilient, future.
***
Although this is not quite what I was expecting when I agreed to take part in the blog tour, I am so very glad that I did as it is a fantastic book.
It is the memoirs of Dr. Benjamin Black, an obstetrician who travelled to Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The novel focusses on his experiences there whilst volunteering with Médecins Sans Frontières. The latter half of the book addresses his experience during the covid pandemic of 2020/21.
Needless to say, the book addresses some complex issues facing all medical staff attending to patients during those two catastrophic events. From necessity, decision making needed to be detached. However, Dr. Black writes in a way that conveys the humanity of his patients and brings them to life on the page.
He writes with compassion but without sentimentality, and his writing is clear, accessible and highly readable. I have no medical background, but I was able to understand his descriptions of the decisions made based on the clinical procedures necessary. And there were certainly some difficult decisions to be made surrounding maternity care.
This book was certainly an eye-opener. We all watched newsreels during the Ebola crises, and we lived through the covid pandemic, and we are blessed in that we survived it. However, this first hand account of being on the front line provided me with much food for thought and the realisation that I could not even begin to comprehend the reality of having to make impossible decisions in the face of such adversity.
This is a powerful, non-fiction title that I highly recommend.
ISBN: 978 1911107576
Publisher: Neem Tree Press
Formats: e-book, hardback and paperback
No. of Pages: 368 (paperback)
About the Author:
Dr Benjamin Black is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist and a specialist advisor to international aid organisations - including Médecins Sans Frontières. His focus on sexual, reproductive and maternal healthcare for populations in times of crisis has taken him to many countries working with humanitarian organisations, UN bodies and government departments. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic he provided frontline healthcare to pregnant women and developed international guidelines. Benjamin was a member of the expert panel for the inquiry into racial injustice in UK maternity care.
(e-book and all media courtesy of The Write Reads)
(all opinions are my own)
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