Tenneh plays with her baby. She kisses him on the cheek, she blows raspberries on his belly, and he giggles. She lifts her baby up high and beams with joy.

Tenneh gave birth to Ansumana three months ago. Thankfully, he’s a happy, bouncing baby boy. But Tenneh has loved and lost another baby before.

A few years ago, she had a traumatic birth. With no health clinic in the village, Tenneh’s mum took her to a traditional birth attendant with very little medical training. Tragically, her baby boy died when he was just three months old.

Sierra Leone is the world’s most dangerous place to become a mum, with ten women dying every day in childbirth. In villages without a health centre, the lives of mums are always in danger.

Thankfully, when she was pregnant a second time, things had changed for good in Tenneh’s village. Christian Aid saw that she, and many mums like her, were in desperate need of a local clinic and of trained healthcare workers to care for them there. This time, with the expert love and care of nurse Judith, Tenneh delivered her baby boy safely in her village’s new health clinic.

 ‘During my second labour, I was scared. But nurse Judith was with me, assuring me of everything. When I delivered, I felt so good.’

Thanks to the new health clinic, Tenneh and the mums in her village don’t have to be afraid of giving birth anymore. For them, pregnancy is now time of joy, not of fear.

Not everyone is so lucky. Right now, Christian Aid’s mobile health clinics are providing a vital service to those who still live too far from a hospital or health centre to travel.

At the mobile clinics, mums in more remote villages can get vital antenatal health care, check-ups and all-important immunisations for their new arrivals, keeping them safe from complications and disease.

We believe every mum’s and baby’s life is worth fighting for. Will you help provide a mobile health clinic to reach more women and children in need?