Anna is a humanitarian aid worker, an NHS nurse and midwife who has cared for some of the most vulnerable women in the most vulnerable places in the world. We don't generally hear so much about aid work so this was a great read, and very squemish in places, medical practices that are completely unheard of in England with our medical facilities. Women, from what I have seen, seem to be at the bottom of the pile – they don't have the ability to speak out. You describe cultures and healthcare so very different to ours but then in doing so you give these women who died a voice, immortalised those, who would otherwise have died leaving no trace, as dust.

What I didn’t think to expect was that it would be such a good book both for experienced aid workers and those who have not witnessed the contexts she has worked in. When offering training to these women she is told the only reason they are actually turning up is for the food etc on offer whilst they are there. Talking about the why she decided to document her experiences, Anna said that sometimes her role as a healthcare professional is to see the atrocities and speak out against them. Disclaimer: I worked with Anna Kent and can confirm the accurracy of her account as well as her compassion and expertise. Frontline Midwife is an account of Anna Kent's time as a midwife in South Sudan, Bangladesh and the UK.

I could not stop reading the extraordinary horrifying and yet beautiful story of Anna Kent’s experience in supporting women in war torn southern Sudan and in the refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Far from presenting herself as a ‘white saviour’ figure, the author is often paralysed by fear, and ever cautious of crossing the line from healthcare worker to moral redeemer. I bet you didn’t have to walk for two days in hot tropical weather to reach your next appointment for a routine health check or watch a drip line suspended from the roof of a tent by a frayed piece of strong. Knowing that you may die in childbirth, is part of the experience for women in so many parts of the world, and Although many of these deaths are unavoidable simple things, like providing a clean way to cut the umbilical cord to prevent neonatal tetanus make a huge difference.Read it and complain to your MP, MS and MSP to increase the humanitarian aid budget, particularly for the hidden crises that are not reported. I was an outreach nurse, in a place that had seen 50 years of civil war, covering a geographical area of Belgium. This is at once an astonishing story of the realities of frontline humanitarian work and a powerful reminder of the critical, life-giving work of midwives at home and around the world. Frontline Midwife is Kent's compassionate testament to the critical work of healthcare professionals around the world.

Then there’s the career Anna has and the differences she made in procedures and planning of health programs and facilities. I think it was so brave of Anna to tell her personal stories about her journey in motherhood too, in such an honest way. In this case, I suppose it was somewhat easier in that she was unable to seek consent from her historic patients as she had no way of contacting them. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Anna’s writing has the power to shock without hyperbole (although there might be some hyperbole at her most blissful moments! Thank you Anna Kent for writing your story and making us aware that we are a long way from getting status for women around the world. This is a very compulsive read but not light in any way-readers should be aware that the honesty and very fitting use of graphic language makes a range of trauma experiences (miscarriage, abuse, war included) feel real at a visceral level.