Pilot Study
Assessing Effect of Weather Conditions on Journey to and Outcome of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care in Benin City, Nigeria
In cities across sub-Saharan Africa, a hospital might be just a few kilometres away, yet still take hours to reach. Traffic congestion, unreliable transport, and fragmented referral systems mean that even in good weather, the journey to childbirth care can be unpredictable, stressful, and potentially life-threatening.
Climate change is making this worse. Rainfall across the region is becoming more intense and more frequent, turning already congested streets into flooded obstacles and pushing journey times even further. For a woman in labour, planning that journey – not knowing how long it will take, whether roads will be passable, or whether help will come in time – is a source of real fear and stress.Yet we currently have no reliable way to measure any of this. No tool exists that can systematically capture how rainfall and flooding delay women's journeys to childbirth care, or the distress those delays cause.
