“I had started to breastfeed her, but then she stopped drinking and started convulsing."
Meet Kadidia
This mother has been through the pain of losing a child not once, not twice, but five times. Kadidia’s first four babies were stillborn. Her fifth baby died from a preventable disease at just three days old.
"She had tetanus,” Kadidia says.
Tetanus is a disease that strikes the poorest and most vulnerable, especially women and their newborns living in areas with limited access to health services and poor hygiene.
The disease is often transmitted when the umbilical cord is cut under unsanitary conditions. In remote rural areas of developing countries, which have limited or no access to medical care, almost all newborns infected with tetanus die.
“After she died, the doctors vaccinated all the other women between 15 and 49-years-old in my village to prevent the disease from spreading to other babies,” Kadidia says.
Earlier this year, Kadidia gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Nahawa. After her birth, hospital staff trained by UNICEF, made sure Nahawa received vaccinations so that she could grow up strong and healthy.