News stories by Bonnie Allen

Mercy Freeman sits on a small hospital cot in one of Liberia’s emergency hospitals, looking down at her frail son, whose dark eye sockets have sunk into his bony face.

Henry Teh gently slides down a blue hospital sheet to expose the bare belly of a pregnant woman. As he pokes around to feel the position of the foetus, the midwife-in-training knows he is breaking tradition and changing the face of obstetric care in Liberia.

In a small office tucked behind the stairwell in Liberia’s Ministry of Education, the once-proud staff of the Girls’ Education Unit appear defeated.

Just a few metres outside the front door of a large white-washed courthouse in north central Liberia, Tete Garwo sells small plastic bags of cold water and passes time by pleading her case to thirsty customers. The 40-year old woman describes how she was forced out of her house by an abusive husband, then deprived of her half of the property.