Hanna Ingber Win is Huffington Post's World Editor. She was recently invited by the UN Population Fund to visit its maternal health programs in Ethiopia, which has one of the world's worst health care systems. In the U.S., a woman has a 1 in 4,800 chance of dying from complications due to pregnancy or childbirth in her lifetime. In Ethiopia, a woman has a 1 in 27 chance of dying.
This is the first in a five-part series on what she learned on her trip. Go to the original post for powerful photographs from the trip.
JIMMA, Ethiopia -- When Zemzem Moustafa went into labor with her fifth child - at age 30 - she could sense a problem. Living in a thatched-roof hut in Ilebabo, a rural village in western Ethiopia, she and her husband walked to the local health post. A health extension worker there could tell that the baby was in the wrong position, but the worker could not help Zemzem and referred her to the hospital. And so Zemzem's journey began, one that ends in tragedy for thousands of women in Ethiopia each year.
She and her husband, a poor farmer, collected 50 birr (US$4) from their neighbors for the trip to a hospital in Jimma, the closest big town. Leaving at around 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, they walked through the fields for an hour until they arrived at a road. Standing at the side of the road, they hailed a rickety old minibus packed with other villagers.