Dear Friend,

People sometimes ask me why I specialize in gynecology and obstetrics—and why I chose to work with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). I always come back to this one story. With Mother's Day coming up, I want to share it with you.

I was in Khost, Afghanistan, where access to maternal health care is woefully scarce. Around five o’clock on a cold winter’s morning, I was called to the delivery room for a patient who was “not well”—which was an understatement. I arrived to find a listless patient on the floor, dress covered in blood, head cradled in her caretaker’s lap. There wasn’t a moment to lose. She was hemorrhaging.


I learned that the patient, Maryam*, had delivered at home earlier that night, and her family couldn’t take her to the hospital until daybreak when the roads were safe. The unstable security situation in Afghanistan has made seeking health care a risky decision, and some patients must drive several hours to find the nearest health care facility.

For the next four hours, we performed resuscitation, supported Maryam's breathing (manually), and operated. She had a tear in her cervix that extended up into her uterus. We needed to work quickly, and ultimately, we removed her uterus and cervix to stop the hemorrhage. She required multiple units of blood.



Thankfully, the procedure was a success, and ten days later, Maryam was well enough to go home.

Two years after my time in Khost, I returned to the same project and had the honor of seeing Maryam again, alive and thriving. She was a caretaker for a young relative in labor and we embraced. I feel that embrace every time I work with a team to help a woman survive pregnancy, whether through safe abortion care or emergency obstetric care.

More than 830 women die every day of pregnancy-related complications globally, Friend. MSF teams are made up of people from around the world, the majority of the medical staff working in their own countries—working hard to provide care where no one else will, in a way that no one else will. I am so proud to be a part of MSF’s mission, and I hope you're just as proud to support it.

With Mother's Day coming up, I hope you'll consider making a special gift to MSF to help mothers like Maryam survive and thrive. Every mother deserves expert and compassionate care, Friend, no matter where they live. It's the most thoughtful Mother's Day gift you could give.

Thank you for making stories like Maryam’s possible,

Dr. Rasha Khoury, MD
Obstetrician-Gynecologist, Boston Medical Center
MSF-USA Board Member

*Name changed to protect the patient’s privacy.