In its latest report the group revealed that one in eight women in the country risks dying during pregnancy or childbirth, compared with one in 4,500 in the developed world.
"Women and girls are dying in their thousands because they are routinely denied their right to life and health, in spite of promises from the government to provide free healthcare to all pregnant women."
President Ernest Bai Koroma has owned up to the charges in New York where he is attending the UN general assembly meeting.
"The indicators, especially in health, are not good, but he would still report that some improvements have been made, including on the infant and maternal mortality rates. We are still at the bottom," intimating that more work needs to be done.
Through his press secretary the president said government was working on creating special conditions of service for health service providers and that it was also working on introducing a health insurance policy.
Minister of information and communication Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo also admitted to poor healthcare but suggested that some aspect of the report might have been 'exaggerated'. He nonetheless told the BBC Network Africa yesterday that his government was trying all it could to put a policy in place to stem the growing social menace.
AI's secretary-general, Irene Khan, who led a high level mission to the country from 18 to 25 September 2009 to launch a campaign to reduce maternal deaths in the country, said pregnant women would have to walk some fifteen miles to seek healthcare services, most of them die before reaching the hospital or bleed to death after complicated delivery.
She referred to the report which found out that many women and girls are too poor to pay for lifesaving treatment.
"Thousands bleed to death after giving birth. Most die in their homes. Some die on the way to hospital - in taxis, on motorbikes or on foot. Less than half of deliveries are attended by a skilled birth attendant and fewer than one in five are carried out in health facilities.
"These grim statistics reveal maternal deaths are a human rights emergency in Sierra Leone," said Irene Khan, Amnesty's secretary general, launching the report in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.
Women in poor rural areas are particularly vulnerable, due to a lack of transport and infrastructure. Campaigners say that the issue is partly a legacy of the country's 11-year civil war.
The Guardian in UK quoted Abigail Renner of Women in Peace Building in Sierra Leone as saying: "We are a postwar country. The cost of living is very high, the roads are bad, drugs are very expensive and we don't have enough hospitals." She added: "Before the war, women were not afraid to have children. Now they are."
The Amnesty campaign coincides with today's United Nations general assembly meeting, where Gordon Brown is expected to announce finance packages to provide free healthcare for millions more women and children in the developing world, including Sierra Leone.
Amnesty's research found the difficulties experienced by women in the country were exacerbated by women's low status in society, the fact that many girls marry and become pregnant at a young age, and the ongoing practice of female genital mutilation. Women's health is often treated as a low priority.
Gareth Thomas, Britain's international development minister, who is visiting the country this week, said: "There has got to be a huge change in the way that women are seen in Sierra Leone. The numbers of women raped and killed during the conflict partly reflects a culture where they are far from equal."
Thomas said postwar improvements in governance should now be matched by basic services. Britain will put £16m into a healthcare plan, working with Unicef and other non-government organizations. "In the 21st century it is unacceptable for people to die because they are too poor to see a doctor or nurse," the minister added.