The Washington Post examines access to maternal and child health services in Sierra Leone after the government dropped fees for such services last year, a move that “appears to have sharply cut into mortality rates for pregnant women and deaths from malaria for small children.”

“Sierra Leone is at the vanguard of a revolution – heavily subsidized for now by international donors – that appears to be substantially lessening health dangers here in one of the riskiest countries in the world for pregnant women and small children,” the newspaper writes (Nossiter/Akam, 7/17).