By: David Nuakolo Flomo Jr
0886836401/davidflomojr17@gmail.Com
Amid the shortage of Liberia’s staple food on the market, dozens of pregnant women at the Shankpallai Maternal Waiting home in Zota district have launched an appeal for food assistance.
Pitifully addressing our reporter following a courtesy visit at the waiting home, the hunger striving women narrated that since the purported artificial scarcity of rice on the Liberian market, they sometimes go to bed with hunger due to the lack of rice in the community the waiting home is located.
The childbearing mothers asserted that their husbands and boyfriends manage to provide the finance but the rice is nowhere to be found for purchasing. Though they admitted supports from owners of their pregnancies, they also used the opportunity to call on leaders of the district and other humanitarian groupings to provide them rice, vital, washing soap, and other cooking utensils in other to better their living conditions at the facility.
Our reporter who visited the facility witnessed a heated argument among the pregnant women over a vita as to whom it belonged. “You just saw us making noise over one vita. That’s how we are living here. “Hand puts it, hand takes it”. One cup plus one vita per person every day but the rice business is very hard here because we can’t find it to buy. we want people who listening to us to help with rice, vita, and other things” they are quoted as saying.
At the same time, Ma-Gwetor Janteh ,the head of the midwifery department at the Shankpallia Clinic has joined the pregnant women to launch an SOS call for more Mattresses and the expansion of the facility to enable them accommodate more pregnant women at the waiting home. She said, limited space to host many persons and lack of sleeping beds are some of the major challenges confronting their operation.
Maternal waiting home is where pregnant women between the periods of 7-9 months go to stay for total midwifery care before delivery. Shankpallai clinic is situated near the border between Liberia and neighboring Guinea in upper Bong County and is currently providing Health services to patients from both Liberia and Guinean
