Safe Motherhood documentaries focus on celebrating human ingenuity to reduce maternal mortality by capturing the stories of resilience in Sierra Leone.

At the bottom of the pyramid, we have the systemic and humanistic challenges that lead to Sierra Leone’s high maternal mortality right. The systemic challenges include poor infrastructure of the healthcare system, general lack of education among the villages, and uneven distribution of resources, especially in rural settings. For humanistic challenges, there is a desensitization of the issue of maternal death, patriarchal roots that prevent women from accessing the necessary education and care they may need, and traditional beliefs, medicine, and practices. To combat these challenges, there are social actors involved. The Ministry of Health and Sanitation works with different partners to reach the communities and provide them with health care. Women are attending ANC days, community leaders are encouraging their village women to go to the clinic for regular check ups and NGO’s provide resources and bridge the human resource gap. These are all actions of compassion, ingenuity, and action. However, the issue is that these wonderful works are not being known to the public.

This is where we, the Safe Motherhood team, come in to capture these stories of compassion, ingenuity, and action in the form of documentaries. While we address the challenges of maternal health in Sierra Leone in our videos, we also celebrate the work that has been done by the different social actors.