Ectopic Pregnancy: When life grows outside the womb

Nancy Akinyi, 30, with her baby at Bondo Sub-County Hospital. Akinyi delivered the baby following an ectopic pregnancy.[Marann Muganda, Standard]

At Bondo Sub-County Hospital, the maternity ward is a place of new beginnings. This afternoon, the cries of newborns fill the large ward as mothers rest beside their babies.

Among them is 30-year-old Nancy Akinyi, cradling a child whose arrival was anything but ordinary. Her pregnancy had not been growing inside her womb. The fertilised egg had implanted in her abdomen, a rare form of ectopic pregnancy that can become life-threatening when diagnosis and treatment are delayed.