By the time the woman arrived at the hospital, she had nearly bled to death.

She went into labor on a warm September day earlier this year, and made the trek from her rural village in the small West African country of Gambia to a nearby clinic. The baby was delivered successfully, but after the birth, the nurses at the clinic couldn’t stop the mother’s bleeding. She suffered from a complication in which her placenta — which is normally expelled after labor — clung to her uterus, preventing the blood vessels that once nourished her child from closing properly. When she arrived at the bigger hospital across the river, the blood loss had caused the color to drain from her skin. Her organs were close to failing.

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