As Labour party conference approaches, politicians will debate spending priorities, fiscal pressures and the UK’s place in the world. Before those discussions begin, I want ministers to picture a hospital ward I visited in Sierra Leone with Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund). Inside the special-care baby unit at Makeni regional hospital were rows of tiny premature babies, some no bigger than my hand.
Around them stood dedicated nurses and anxious parents, all willing these newborns to survive. Then I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. It was 2019, and I noticed a UK aid sticker fixed above a tiny incubator.
Inside was a premature baby fighting for breath. Nearby stood oxygen equipment that staff explained had been funded through UK support. I learned that when power outages struck the hospital, as they often did, that equipment helped keep vulnerable newborns alive.
Being in the presence of these sometimes inconceivably small children, seeing the UK aid sticker labelled across the incubators that were keeping them alive, emotion completely overcame me. Pride that people in Britain, most of whom would never meet that baby or their family, had helped make survival possible. Seven years later, that moment remains one of the most impactful of my life.
When you are standing beside a newborn fighting for every breath, politics feels very far away. But the truth is that babies live or die because of political choices. Since 2017, Unicef has supported Sierra Leone’s government to establish special-care baby units, providing sick and premature newborns with specialised treatment that was previously unavailable to many in the country.
I met doctors and nurses doing extraordinary work despite limited resources. I saw community health workers connecting families with health facilities, and mothers receiving advice and support. One of them was Josephine, whose one-month-old daughter, also called Josephine, had been born dangerously premature at seven months.
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