the serious life-threatening problem of extreme anaemia in late pregnancy. Another group to which he belonged, unraveled the influence of several haemoglobinopathies on pregnant women and their babies under African conditions, and how best to deal with the most dangerous of them, namely sickle cell disease. In Zaria, his collaborative studies on malaria in pregnancy discovered that protecting early teenage pregnant girls against malaria and anaemia conferred a hitherto unknown benefit: the protected girls grew taller, they produced bigger babies, yet the proportion of those of them who developed cephalopelvic disproportion and needed operative delivery, fell sharply. This offers hope that in malaria endemic areas, obstructed labour and vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) might be prevented by protecting these vulnerable girls against malaria and by adding nutritional supplements to their diets during pregnancy. The Zaria Maternity Survey by a team Harrison led, was his most influential work. Between 1976 and 1979, Harrison and his colleagues collected data on over 22,000 births that when analysed, threw open the problems of traditional forms of interference, of adolescent marriage and pregnancy, of women's inferior status, and of their neglect in pregnancy, labour and afterwards, and of the consequences of this neglect especially high levels of both maternal mortality and VVF. The strongest message that came through this work was that both maternal and perinatal health benefitted hugely when women were educated, but not when they were illiterate. Harrison concluded that although the real priority in the area is reducing maternal deaths, the real problem to be faced is not so much medical but sociological, and that the eradication of mass illiteracy through universal formal education is a fundamental key to better maternal health. In other words, if we want to reduce maternal mortality we should stop looking at the problem in isolation. Harrison's work was published by British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in October 1985.,. The work gained instant recognition as a major advance in maternity care, and featured as a major factor in the planning and launching of the international safe motherhood movement in 1987. <ref. www.amazon.com/Arduous-Climb-Obstetrician-University-Vice-Chancellor/product-reviews/1905068395/ref...>/ref> Back in Zaria, the activities of the team Kelsey Harrison led, that included sociologists succeeded in eradicating VVF in the Zaria area in the 1970s, although it resurged after he had left the area. Besides Harrison's heavy clinical, teaching and research activities, he took active part in various community services and international assignments throughout his working