Despite years of reviews, campaigns and policy commitments, Black women in the United Kingdom remain almost three times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than their White counterparts. The latest national investigation into maternity care, led by Baroness Valerie Amos, is examining the experiences of hundreds of affected families and is expected to shape maternity policy across Britain for years to come.
Among the clinicians consulted during the process is Sarah Chitongo, a Bulawayo born midwife whose work is increasingly influencing healthcare policy, education and innovation across the United Kingdom and beyond.
Chitongo trained as a nurse before specialising in midwifery in Britain. Over a career spanning more than two decades, she has held senior clinical and academic roles, including serving as Acting Deputy Head of Midwifery at Princess Royal University Hospital in Kent. There, she helped establish a high dependency unit within the maternity service to support women with complex pregnancies requiring intensive care.
Her work as a midwifery educator at Middlesex University attracted international attention when she became one of the first clinicians in Britain to introduce augmented reality technology into midwifery training. The initiative was featured by Reuters, the BBC and Voice of America.
In 2018, Chitongo received the prestigious Mary Seacole Award, one of the highest honours available to Black and minority ethnic nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom. She is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Midwives and holds the title of Queen’s Nurse, recognising sustained excellence in healthcare leadership.
Yet Chitongo says the turning point in her life came not through professional recognition but through a personal moment of faith.
In May 2025, she attended a women’s leadership gathering in London called Limitless Woman, hosted by Zimbabwean born organisational psychologist and author Sarah Garande.
“I walked in tired,” Chitongo recalled. “Not the tired of a long week. The tired of twenty years standing in maternity rooms watching things I could not unsee. Something shifted in me that night. It was not a feeling. It was a permission.”
What followed was a remarkable year of growth and influence.
Chitongo founded a charity, launched a digital health platform, established a women’s wellness brand, contributed to the British government’s Women’s Health Strategy, joined the reference group designing new anti racism standards for nursing and midwifery education, and contributed to recommendations being developed through the Amos maternity investigation.
She also began collaborating with leading researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s EXPPECT Centre, one of the world’s foremost endometriosis research institutions, while joining broader efforts to improve women’s healthcare both in Britain and across Africa.
At the centre of her work is Black Blossom Alliance, a community interest company focused on improving maternity outcomes for Black women through advocacy, professional training and culturally responsive healthcare.
Alongside this sits Vina, a digital health platform designed to help women track symptoms associated with conditions such as endometriosis, adenomyosis and fibroids. The platform allows users to document symptoms over ninety days and present structured clinical evidence during medical consultations.
The need is significant. Women in the United Kingdom currently wait an average of more than nine years for an endometriosis diagnosis, with delays often longer for Black women.
Chitongo also founded Kora Women, an organic body care brand developed to address gaps in products designed specifically for women’s health and wellbeing.
Her expertise has extended into publishing. Her book, Reframing Risk, Redesigning Care, is now used within British midwifery education programmes, while her latest publication, Period Pains: Endometriosis, Adenomyosis, Fibroids and the Fight for Better Women’s Healthcare, further explores systemic challenges facing women seeking diagnosis and treatment.
Increasingly, however, Chitongo’s attention is turning towards Africa.
She believes many of the solutions being developed within British healthcare systems can be adapted to address some of the continent’s most pressing maternal health challenges. In sub Saharan Africa, the lifetime risk of a woman dying during pregnancy or childbirth remains dramatically higher than in wealthier countries.
“We have spent decades importing Western maternity models into African systems and then expressing surprise when they break,” Chitongo said. “African maternity care has been designed in rooms that do not contain African women. That is what I am building toward changing.”
She argues that African healthcare professionals working across Britain, Canada and the United States represent a powerful bridge between global expertise and local realities.
“This is not aid. This is infrastructure. Built by African women, for African women.”
For young women across Zimbabwe and the continent, Chitongo hopes her journey serves as a reminder that ambition should not be limited by circumstance.
“If the dream you are carrying feels too big for the woman holding it, that is how you know it is yours,” she said. “The dream that is yours is the one that scares you in the morning and keeps you up at night.”
Then she added one final thought.
“He did not get the wrong woman.”
