The Evidence: Maternal Health in Malawi

As a child growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, Washington Yotto Ochieng once watched a plane cross the night sky and told his mother he wished he could travel on it. But he remembers her encouraging him to dream bigger... Today, Washington is a Professor o ...  Show more

Working on a remote tropical island in the Atlantic might sound like some sort of romantic idyll - but trying to conduct scientific research on a windy, isolated volanic outcrop is no picnic, as Lucy Carpenter can attest! Lucy is an atmopsheric chemist and a Professor at the Univ ...  Show more

Women do 90% of the work in global healthcare but hold only a quarter of leadership roles. We hear from an American doctor who says patients are missing out on the unique perspective of women because they aren’t involved in strategic decision-making. Margaret in Nairobi has set u ...  Show more

Childbirth seems to be getting more and more medicalized, with C-sections and other interventions out the wazoo. But childbirth isn’t a disease! So is all this medical meddling really necessary, or are doctors too trigger-happy with the scalpel? To find out, we talked to obstetri ...  Show more

In 2013, broadcaster and journalist Krupa Padhy, one of the presenters for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, lost her first child because of medical negligence in a London Hospital. Legal action was taken. Midwives and doctors were given extra training. Lessons were, apparently, learne ...  Show more

Over the past six decades, Dr Edna Adan Ismail has been a nurse and midwife. She has spent her life fighting for maternal health care rights in Somaliland and campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation- a practice which involves the partial or total removal of genitalia. It le ...  Show more