URGENT APPEAL: MOTHERS & BABIES NEED YOU
This Christmas, please help save mothers and babies from dying needlessly
Why your gift matters
In the remote Afar region of Ethiopia, mothers are still dying while giving life.
No hospitals. No roads. No doctors. Just endless desert and the hope that someone will reach them in time.
Every day, another family loses a mother. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Your gift today will train more Traditional Birth Attendants — women who bring life-saving care to mothers where no other help exists. With skilled knowledge, clean birthing kits and ability to access emergency transport, they can stop preventable deaths before they happen.
Please give a gift today to turn silent nights into safe nights — and help mothers in Afar live to hear their baby’s first cry.
Pictured: a trained Traditional Birth Attendant [left] providing antenatal care to an expectant mother.
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“I have seen mothers labouring for days, too weak in the end to cry out. I have seen them and their baby perish, with silence and tears where there should have been joy and a baby's first cry," says Haddi.
“I thought this was how life was. I thought there was nothing anyone could do.”
"Before my training, I saw too many horrors. Back then, I did not know what to do, how to save them. But now I do."
By training more Traditional Birth Attendants like Haddi, you can prevent mothers and babies from needlessly dying in childbirth and help end the tragedy that is maternal mortality in Ethiopia's Afar.
What is a Traditional Birth Attendant?
In Afar, most women still give birth at home, far from hospitals or health centres. Families turn to a Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) — a trusted woman in the community who once relied on experience alone. Through our local project partners APDA, TBAs now receive formal training in safe pregnancy and childbirth. Equipped with clean birthing kits, they are often the only source of care in these remote communities.
Pictured: a trained TBA providing antenatal care to an expectant mother.
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How important is a Traditional Birth Attendant?
Across Afar’s vast, often roadless desert, many women live days from the nearest health centre. A trained TBA can reach mothers where no one else can — in their homes, on the move, across harsh terrain. Each TBA trained means more mothers checked, cleaner and safer deliveries, and more newborns surviving their first day of life. For expectant mothers living in one of the most isolated and deadly regions of Ethiopia, a trained TBA can mean the difference between life and death.
Pictured: TBAs learning about newborn resuscitation as part of their formal training.
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