Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement marking 10 years of Wales for Africa and the really interesting experiences that you had in Uganda. I think it’s been fascinating to listen to. I declare an interest as a trustee for Life for African Mothers, which does all it can to make life safer for women giving birth in sub-Saharan Africa by helping with medication and with training, and the charity is also 10 years old. I noted what the Cabinet Secretary said about the scenes that he witnessed in the hospitals in Uganda, and I’ve been to Africa on a number of occasions and have also seen similar scenes, and I suppose you really have to say it is life-changing when you see such situations.

Angela Gorman founded the charity Life for African Mothers, and she had a great deal of help from the Wales for Africa programme, because it supported her secondment from the neonatal intensive care unit at the University Hospital of Wales in Heath, and grant funded her activities training midwives and providing medicines. And the initial grant from Wales for Africa enabled the charity to flourish and now means it is not dependent on any grants from the Wales for Africa programme. Doesn’t he think that this is an ideal progression: to start off with small grants to help organisations grow, and then they find other sources of funding and develop?

As well as support from the Wales for Africa programme, Angela in particular cites the special leave policy in the NHS in Wales as being absolutely crucial to the deployment of Welsh professionals to support training and health systems in Africa. And I wondered if the Cabinet Secretary was able to tell us if that leave programme is applied consistently throughout Wales and whether he feels that this is absolutely something that we would want to encourage.

Finally, I think the tragic death of women after childbirth is probably one of the most awful tragedies that can be witnessed, and I’d like to really express my support and gratitude to all those organisations, including Life for African Mothers, who have gone out of their way to try to improve the situation in sub-Saharan Africa.