Maseru — "I woke up this morning and a nurse told me that I have been I a comma since I came in," says Ntsoaki* from her bed in Lesotho's only referral hospital. "I don't know where I will go when I leave the hospital. I do not have money to pay and I do not have any clothes with me. I was not trying to abort the baby, I was trying to commit suicide using rat poison because my boyfriend did not want the baby and my mother said she could not support us. Unfortunately for me I survived and only my baby died."
Last week Lesotho Minister of Health Nkaku Kabi announced that the hospital is bursting at the seams with 15 young women admitted each week following abortion complications. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 35 out of 1000 pregnancies in Southern Africa end in abortions; one of the highest rates in the world. Almost all of these are backstreet. Abortion is the third highest cause of already high rates of maternal mortality. Yet, according to WHO, safe abortion is one of the simplest and most effective procedures to administer.
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