Winner of the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing

'Moving, kind, eye-opening, terrifying and inspirational. This book will stay with me for years.' Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt

In 2014, Dr Benjamin Black arrived in Sierra Leone to work as an obstetrician in a country with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Within weeks, the Ebola epidemic was spreading rapidly across West Africa, transforming an already fragile healthcare system into the frontline of an unprecedented crisis.

From maternity wards to Ebola Treatment Centres, Black was confronted with impossible decisions: how do you provide emergency care when physical contact itself can be deadly? How do you protect healthcare workers without abandoning the women who desperately need them? And what happens to pregnancy and childbirth when an epidemic overwhelms almost every aspect of medical care?

Drawing on his experiences with Médecins Sans Frontières, Belly Woman takes readers behind the headlines to meet the women, families and healthcare workers living through the epidemic. Black writes with remarkable honesty about maternal death, reproductive healthcare and the realities of humanitarian medicine, but also about courage, camaraderie and the moments of hope that persist in the midst of crisis.

Looking from Ebola to his later experiences providing maternity care during COVID-19, Black asks what these outbreaks reveal about inequality, global health and the choices we make when healthcare systems are pushed to their limits.

Urgent, compassionate and deeply human, Belly Woman is an extraordinary medical memoir about caring for women in some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable.



Dr Benjamin Black is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist based in London and a specialist in sexual, reproductive and maternal healthcare in humanitarian crises. He has worked with international aid organisations including Médecins Sans Frontières and advises governments, academic institutions and UN bodies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he provided frontline maternity care and supported the development of international guidelines. He also teaches medical teams around the world to improve reproductive healthcare for vulnerable populations in challenging environments.



'Moving, kind, eye-opening, terrifying and inspirational - this book will stay with me for years.'



'Belly Woman is a must-read for our times. It is riveting, illuminating and humbling.'



'This is an inspirational story of compassion and dedication in the face of a brutal epidemic, and Benjamin Black is the one to tell it.'



'Brave, moving, and vital. A unique account of battling the Ebola outbreak while providing maternity care in Sierra Leone, and of the incredible women, families, and health workers Dr Black encountered. Read it.'



'Belly Woman is a jaw-dropping, mind-expanding read, a work of vast compassion and delicate insight into the bracing reality of giving birth in today's Africa. At times it's hard to read on without wanting to weep – at the mistakes made and the sheer implacability of death. But like the author himself, you never become numbed or unaffected by the women we encounter, such is their courage and the vividness of Black's writing in capturing their experiences.'



'Connecting individual patients and their caregivers to pandemics and the uncertain landscape of twenty-first century humanitarianism, Black shares with us how he seeks to understand the complexities at work in our world as he fights for new and existing lives. Written with clarity and compassion, and sometimes a challenging, graphic urgency, readers will be reminded of the essential truth that no matter where human beings live or under what particular circumstances, babies will be born, and that they and their mothers will need help with survival and future health. Even if it is from a distance, it is up to all of us to take care of each other.'



'I was gripped from the first page. May we all be humbled by this book.'