Whittington medic’s book wins prize for human rights writing
Benjamin Brown in Sierra Leone
A WHITTINGTON consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist’s book has won a prestigious prize for human rights writing.
Benjamin Brown’s Belly Woman: Birth, Blood and Ebola tells the story of how he took time out from the Highgate hospital to help young women give birth in Africa. When he arrived in June 2014, Sierra Leone already had the highest death rate of pregnant women in the world – and then the Ebola epidemic hit.
“I am told I have a tendency to get very morbid quite quickly,” said Dr Brown, now 42. He spoke about the shield he had to construct mentally to protect himself from the horrors he had witnessed as a rampant killer disease claimed the lives of not only patients but also colleagues working in a close-knit team of “aid responders” for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
He said: “There was no known treatment available and so a lot of it is what was called ‘supportive care’, where you are giving basic hygiene and offering nutrition and antibiotics. “For perspective: morbidity rates were 70 percent with Ebola. Covid was in the single digits.”
Of Sierra Leone, he said: “This is a poor country. People are living in close proximity to each other. There is a culture out there around death where you keep the body in the home. The way of living, and cultural issues, gave a lending hand to the virus. It was one of those situations, a perfect storm that came together.
“Management was more about breaking the chain of transition. Ebola is spread by body fluids. And as you may know, when a baby is born, there is a lot of body fluid involved. Women giving birth resulted in a high chain of transmission in patients and healthcare workers. I think it was 32 times higher than the local population.”
How did he survive? “You know how in the UK with Covid there were guidelines every other week? Out there, we had to have very strict rules,” he said. “The whole time in Sierra Leone I was never allowed to touch another person – not just at work – but anywhere. There were close shaves. People I lived with became infected.
“When I think about the emotional toll of humanitarian work, look at colleagues working in Gaza for example, there is of course always a certain degree of normalisation: when it is what you do, you become blunted to it. I write about that, there was this point when I realised I was not emotionally connected with the events around me, in a normal way.”
Mr Brown said returning to the Whittington and writing had been a “cathartic process for me”. Belly Woman gets its name from the language – a blend of Creole and English – used to describe pregnant women in Sierra Leone, “Beleh”.
He said: “When I wrote the book I was very clear it wasn’t going to be a textbook. It wanted to write something you would pick up and read if you were commuting on a holiday. I know it sounds strange, but it’s fine as a holiday read. There are juxtapositions with Covid. And the high-income Highgate pregnancy care versus women who were pitching up three days into labour in Sierra Leone.
“Not to criticise the Highgate women, but just to draw this comparison about how far the disparity is. It’s a six-hour flight.” It is the first time a book about health has won the Moore Human Rights Award and has been praised by This is Going to Hurt author Adam Kay, who said: “This book will stay with me for years.”
