Shona Featherstone will never forget the first time she delivered a baby in a rundown schoolroom in a Nigerian village.

“The delivery bed was nothing more than a table. There were women lying across desks,” she says.

Shona, a midwife at Airedale Hospital, Steeton, has travelled to Nigeria twice to work with a safe motherhood project, providing emergency skills training to staff working in maternity services.

She’s a trustee of international charity Living Hope, set up in 1994 by a group of obstetricians.

The charity has opened a hospital in southern Nigeria, and the Living Hope Safe Motherhood Project works with expectant mothers in clinics in villages.

Shona worked with the project earlier this year and hopes to return next year. She describes her visits as “life-changing”.

“In Nigeria, as in a large number of developing countries, the maternal mortality rate is very high,” she says. “The cost of healthcare is beyond the means of many people, so they don’t have access to hospitals or specialist equipment. The situation is like it was in this country before the 1902 Midwife Act.”

Shona heard about Living Hope through a chance conversation at work.

“There were two Nigerian obstetricians working at Airedale and they spoke so passionately about the poor state of women’s health in Nigeria and the work of this project,” says Shona.

“One of them was Thomas Odejede, who set up the Friends of Living Hope Hospital. He’s such an inspirational man. After talking to him, I really wanted to help. One of my roles here is emergency training, and I thought about translating this to a Nigeria setting. It ballooned from there.”

Shona travelled to rural Ileife in southern Nigeria, where 60 per cent of deliveries are done by untrained birth attendants.

“Deliveries take place at home, in mission houses, churches and mosques,” says Shona. “A lot of my work involves educating traditional birth attendants, getting them to recognise when something goes wrong during labour and referring women to hospital.

“Birth attendants are reluctant to refer women to hospital for fear of being prosecuted because they’re not officially recognised by the government. The Living Hope hospital provides free, sustainable healthcare.”

Common problems during childbirth include breach deliveries and obstructed or prolonged labour; complications that would lead to a caesarean operation in this country.

“Even the women who survive a traumatic labour can suffer a ruptured uterus or haemorrhaging, and there are no blood transfusion facilities in the villages,” says Shona. “When I was there, we needed to do a caesarean section and the charity had to pay for oxygen on the black market.

“Some birth complications lead men to leave their wives, so the women become socially isolated.”

Shona, who has been a midwife for 15 years, was shocked by the basic standards of healthcare when she first visited Nigeria.

“You see poverty on the news, but it’s only when you see it firsthand that you realise how devastating it really is. The hospital offers free healthcare, but conditions are basic.

“There’s no hot running water and the power often goes off in the middle of an operation. Someone has to run outside and crank up the generator. They pay the electric bills, but the country is so corrupt, the power is unreliable.”

This year the Living Hope charity sent 280 kilogrammes of aid to Nigeria, including equipment from Airedale Hospital.

“Equipment which is ten or 15 years old is considered obsolete in NHS terms, but in Africa they can get another 20 years out of it,” says Shona. “We’ve sent things like CTG machines and hand-held dopplers used to listen to babies’ hearts. The women are amazed to hear their own baby’s heartbeats.

“The situation is bad, but it would be so much worse if our charity wasn’t there. I spend time talking to pregnant women, trying to encourage them to make provision for their labour, to go into hospital rather than having their baby in a mission house.”

Shona has collected aid from colleagues and friends and has taken baby clothes and nappies in her own luggage.

“The support has been wonderful,” she says. “My colleagues at Airedale have raised thousands of pounds.

“When we hand over the items in the villages there’s a stampede. The fact that mothers will trample over their neighbours for a couple of nappies shows how desperate they are.

“The work of Living Hope is based on the goodwill of a few individuals and a groundswell of support from Airedale Hospital and people across the district.”

For more information, visit friendsoflivinghope.org.uk.

Anyone interested in making a donation can call Shona at Airedale Hospital on 01535 292401.