Give to Area 25 Health Center
19,341...
Does this equal:
A. The number of maternal and neonatal deaths in Malawi each year
B. The number of women and girls in Malawi living with obstetric fistula
C. The altitude in feet of Mount Kilimanjaro
The answer is C. However, both A and B are unfortunately also way too high.
In Malawi, approximately 15,000 babies and more than 3,000 mothers die in childbirth each year. 98% of these deaths are entirely preventable with adequate maternity care.
Babies die around the time of delivery usually due to inadequate attention to the mother. This lack of attention causes mothers to labor unnecessarily for extended periods of time. Without access to cesarean delivery, this prolonged labor often results in obstetric fistula. Today, approximately 8,000 women in Malawi are living with obstetric fistula -- a devastating condition that is also nearly 100% preventable with proper maternity care.
Area 25 Health Center
The Area 25 Health Center is a semi-urban hospital outside of Malawi’s capital city of Lilongwe that currently provides prenatal care and vaginal deliveries to 2,000 women each year. Area 25 does not have an operating room, so physicians are unable to perform life-saving cesarean deliveries to mothers in labor or life-changing fistula repairs to women who are suffering.
Dr. Jeffrey Wilkinson, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Texas Children’s Hospital and the senior surgeon of the Fistula Care Center in Malawi, is working with Texas Children’s to build an operating room at Area 25. This is projected to increase deliveries from 2,000 to 5,000 babies per year by 2020. It will also significantly reduce maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality in the area.
Your Support
While working in Malawi this summer, Dr. Wilkinson and his two children will travel to Tanzania in an attempt to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. They are using this ambitious climb as an opportunity to raise funds for the construction of an operating room at Area 25 and to support the health center’s operations for the next five years.
We need $1 million to get this program off the ground. We have over $750,000 committed to the program. You can be a part of helping women and children in Malawi receive the care they deserve by supporting the Wilkinson family’s climb of all 19,341 feet to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. One-hundred percent of your tax-deductible donation will go toward the construction and operating costs for Area 25.
