Liberia: Abandoned Maternal Homes Expose Deadly Politics of Optics

Four concrete shells along the Fissebu-Voinjama highway tell a familiar Liberian story: money spent, promises made, lives forgotten. Built with public funds to protect pregnant women, the abandoned maternal waiting homes in Zorzor now stand as mute evidence of how development projects, driven more by optics than outcomes, leave taxpayers poorer and communities no safer.

Maternal waiting homes are not cosmetic infrastructure. They are lifesaving interventions meant to bridge distance, poverty, and risk for rural women nearing childbirth. Yet in Lofa County, what should have been a carefully planned extension of the health system became a construction exercise detached from medical reality

This failure exposes a deeper governance flaw. Projects conceived and executed without the leadership of health professionals are bound to fail. That is why the Ministry of Health must immediately take over these facilities, assessing whether they can be rehabilitated, relocated in purpose, or formally integrated into maternal health services. If the structures cannot safely function as maternal waiting homes, the ministry must say so plainly and recommend repurposing that actually serves public health needs, not political talking points.

Equally troubling is the institutional silence that followed construction. Local health authorities were not consulted. Hospital administrators were left guessing. No formal handover occurred. Accountability dissolved the moment the ribbon-cutting photo opportunity passed. That is not an accident; it is a pattern.

The current administration must take this lesson seriously. Continuing down a path where projects are launched for quick political gains, without planning, consultation, or sustainability, will lead Liberia nowhere. Development is not measured by the number of structures erected but by whether those structures save lives, deliver services, and endure beyond election cycles.

Liberia's maternal mortality rate remains among the highest in the region. In that context, abandoned maternity facilities are not just wasteful; they are morally indefensible. Every stalled project represents a choice, between substance and symbolism, between governance and grandstanding.

If this government repeats the mistakes of its predecessors, using public works as political props rather than public solutions, it will inherit not progress, but the same concrete failures. And once again, Liberian women will pay the price.

Read the original article on Liberian Investigator.