The ride that arrived at two in the morning
“I kept the voucher folded in my dress for two months. Then one night the pains started.”
Betty lives forty minutes on foot from the nearest health centre, and that is in daylight, when the path is dry. Her first two children were born at home because labour started at night and there was no way to get there.
When a village health team registered her third pregnancy, she was given a clean delivery kit and a pre-paid transport voucher. She used it at ten past two in the morning.
Her daughter was delivered by a midwife at the health centre an hour later. A health worker visited them at home three times in the six weeks that followed.