Pharmacy on a Bicycle

5 The Warmth of a Mother’s Touch: Maternal and Child Health

Sadiki lay in pain, exhausted, on the floor of her home in Malindi, a rural village in Kenya. She had been in labor for more than twenty hours. She wondered why this birth was so much more difficult than her previous one. Maybe it was because her husband had been by her side back then. But after a roadside accident made her a widow at twenty-four with a set of twins at home and a baby on the way, all of life seemed different.

After her husband’s death, Sadiki received aid from the Caris Family Foundation, an international NGO focused on helping single mothers develop health and business skills. Entrepreneurial by nature and now even more motivated, she began mastering skills and dreamed ...