Demi Moore - Demi Moore Narrates Hard-Hitting Video About Death Of Young Mum

DEMI MOORE has joined a campaign to highlight the plight of abused teenage girls and young mothers in the Third World.

The actress has narrated a harrowing new public awareness video, which focuses on the story of a young African woman's pregnancy nightmare.

The video aired on Oprah Winfrey's U.S. talk show on Tuesday (01Dec09).

In the hard-hitting film about the woman called Prudence, the Ghost star reveals, "An African woman has one chance in 20 of dying in pregnancy. In much of the world, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is become pregnant.

"This is Prudence, a 24-year-old mother of three from a remote village in Cameroon. After suffering three days of agonising labour, a midwife sat on her stomach in a desperate attempt to force the baby out, but instead ruptured her uterus.

"Hoping to save the baby, Prudence's family found someone to drive her 75 miles to the hospital on a motorcycle."

Moore explains Prudence's story was picked up by acclaimed New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, who found the desperate mum lying ignored and untreated in an empty hospital room two days after she was admitted.

She adds, "The now-dead foetus was rotting inside her belly."

Moore reveals Prudence needed a blood transfusion to save her life and an emergency Caesarean section to remove the baby, which was slowly poisoning her. But the doctor refused to operate until he was paid $100 (£62.50).

Kristof, who filmed the video, reveals he and his crew "chipped in" to pay the doctor and offered his blood for the transfusion - but the medic left the hospital for the day without operating.

Moore picks up the story: "The next morning Nick found Prudence lying in her own vomit and her urine bag overflowing. The doctor had finally performed the operation and there seemed to be a bit of hope for Prudence, but she slipped into a coma and, without antibiotics, infection raged throughout her body."

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kristof, who chronicles the plight of struggling women in the world's poorest countries in his New York Times column and in new book Half The Sky, adds, "It's completely unnecessary that that mother of three died."

Moore isn't the only celebrity who has been moved by Kristof's crusade to highlight the plight of women killed, murdered and neglected in the Third World - George Clooney admits the journalist's work inspired him to visit Darfur, Sudan to find out more about the horrors the writer described.

Clooney has since become an outspoken campaigner, fighting the genocide in the Sudan. The actor returned to the region with Kristof earlier this year (09).

Ben Affleck also accompanied the journalist to the Congo and agreed to film and narrate a video about the country's rape crisis.

His harrowing tale focused on a 41-year-old teacher who had been beaten and raped and left for dead by soldiers. Locals in her village had deemed her unfit to wed and refused to help her. She was dying of starvation when Affleck and Kristof found her and begged a villager to take her to a hospital.

Like Prudence, the woman died weeks later.