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Community StoryHealthWomen & Girls

Eighteen, and Three Babies

She gave birth to triplets in Voinjama, alone and unable to pay for the medication she and her newborns needed.

A young mother, two relatives, and a Lofa24 team member each hold a swaddled newborn outside a whitewashed house.
Date
Location
Voinjama, Lofa County
Reporting
The Lofa24 team
Subjects
Community Story, Health, Women & Girls

She was eighteen years old when she gave birth to triplets at the hospital in Voinjama. She was single. And once the babies had arrived, she could not afford the medication that she and the three of them needed to be discharged safely.

So she stayed. Stranded on a ward with three newborns and a bill she had no way to pay.

This is a specific and very common kind of crisis, and it is worth naming precisely, because it is not a story about a girl who made a mistake. It is a story about what happens when an adolescent mother in a rural county meets a health system that requires cash at the exact moment she has none. The medical care existed. The distance between her and it was money.

Our team went to her. We reported what had happened, and we gathered what she asked for: clothes for the babies, bedsheets, baby food. When the supplies came, all three were carried out into the yard and photographed in the arms of her relatives and our team, one child each.

One of the triplets died a short time afterward, following a brief illness.

We are not going to write around that. She had three babies and now she has two, and the delivery of clothes and food did not prevent it. It would be dishonest to present this as a story that resolved.

What we can say is that we have not closed the file. Lofa24 continues to advocate for her, and continues to gather useful supplies on her behalf and on behalf of the two surviving children.

From the visit

  • A young mother, two relatives, and a Lofa24 team member each hold a swaddled newborn outside a whitewashed house.

    All three newborns, the day supplies arrived.

  • The family and Lofa24 team stand together against a whitewashed wall, holding the three babies and bundles of donated cloth.

    Clothes, bedsheets, and baby food, gathered from supporters.

  • The mother in a pink blouse and two relatives hold the swaddled triplets outside the family home.

Support a story

Rice, bedsheets, baby food, a repaired shopfront. Each one arrived because somebody read a story and asked what was needed.

Several of those people asked to remain anonymous. We do not collect payments on this website — get in touch and we will tell you exactly what is needed, who receives it, and what it changed.

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