Partners In Health

Fourteen weeks ahead of his due date, Naphtal was unexpectedly delivered on a rural farm on the edge of Kono District, Sierra Leone, miles away from any health facility. He and his mother, who was in dire condition after a complicated, unattended birth, were rushed by ambulance to Koidu Government Hospital, Kono’s only hospital. None of the family’s neighbors, who had scrambled to call for help, thought that Naphtal would survive: He weighed less than two pounds, and without intensive, specialized neonatal care—care that had never existed in the rural, impoverished district, even at the highest-level health facility—loss seemed certain.