'It is for us, who will give birth here': the women breaking barriers to build Sierra Leone's new maternity unit

The state-of-the-art facility will bring huge improvements to care in the country but it is also challenging gender roles in the construction industry In Kono District, in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone, where diamond-rich earth was once exploited to fund a decade-long civil war, a new legacy is being built in its capital, Koidu. Behind a steel fence, the rooms of a new maternity centre, the Maternal Center of Excellence, are emerging - and about 60% of those wearing hard hats on site are ...