The Mother Haiti Must Work Hard

When the screams of women who gave birth began to subside, people can hear the cries of babies newly weak witness life in the general hospital in the Haitian capital of the chaotic post-earthquake.

The women were lying on the mattress that lies on a bed of stone krikil stuffy in the tent erected in the hospital yard. Some women lose their limbs, others suffered a broken hip.

In Haiti, kegembiran become a parent must wait, sometimes forever.

"The woman gave birth after removed from the rubble, their arms or legs amputated, most of the injuries," said Jean Herby LaFrance, Haiti doctor who was educated in Cuba and flew back to his home country with a group of Cuban medical staff earlier last week, told AFP.

Before the January 12 earthquake, which is estimated to have killed 150,000 people, the poor countries in the Caribbean has the highest maternal mortality rate in the western hemisphere - 670 deaths per 100,000 births.

As many as 15 percent of births involve bleeding or other complications that require surgery, said the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), with an estimated 63,000 pregnant women in the population who become victims in Haiti.

The doctors, nurses, and mothers face a long task. Parents carrying infants in their arms, some caring for their babies. Most face without expression, they are caught between the pain and joy of facing destruction because it is still alive. The others smiled in the face of all that.

So far has helped LaFrance 20 born, including five via a C-section and two pre-premature birth because the mother under stress caused by the earthquake.

"We have to face the eight women who miscarry, with a pregnancy of about three or four months," said the 33-year-old - who has two children at his home in Santiago de Cuba.

"We're very short of equipment, especially for a C-section," LaFrance said. "Things to do very critical operations, we do not have the equipment, but we still have to perform the operation. It's very difficult."

It claims no obstetrician when he arrived. Today, with the volunteers from around the world in Haiti, he said there were enough doctors, but almost all other requirements are minimal.

"We do not have anything to deal with all women, no compressor, sometimes there's no pain medication and the operating table is incomplete. We need the equipment," he said.

Some women can not get to the hospital and give birth without the help of many temporary camps that have mushroomed in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. Circumstances outside Haiti's capital could be much worse.

"A total of 7000 women giving birth is expected in various regions of the earthquake victims during the next month, and as many as 1,000 women expected to miscarry again," said the UNFPA Jemilah Mahmood told AFP.

UNFPA is trying to get the "basic reproductive health equipment" which contains a plastic sheet, sterile knife to cut the cord and string to tie it clean, plus blankets for newborns, for pregnant women in Haiti.

"Midwives and health centers, when they see someone who obviously pregnant and give birth, they gave the equipment to the mothers so that they can give birth in the middle of the road. They were given a clean delivery equipment," said Jemilah.

More sophisticated equipment will be distributed to hospitals and health centers that had escaped from the earthquake. Some have an emergency C-section equipment, others have the equipment from storage to the glove.



Dignity lost

However, although equipment may be one step towards the provision of simple health conditions for women when they give birth, it was not to keep others who are also taken from the girls and women of Haiti caused by the earthquake: dignity.

Joane Kerez (20) gave birth to her first child a week more than a day after an earthquake shook the central square in Port-au-Prince, Haiti where thousands of people who lost their homes to establish a shelter, so a description of a CARE worker in a network of non-governmental organizations such .

Kerez only have a tarpaulin to cover herself, her mother - who helped her give birth - and a group of people watch and stare as she gave birth.

"Actually I prefer to be somewhere else, in a place that is cleaner without all the people staring at my body," said Kerez.

"One of the conditions that almost never discussed is the dignity," said Jemilah, who explained that the UNFPA has started distributing "the dignity of equipment" to the women of Haiti.

Equipment contains a clean towel, medical materials and underwear.

"Women and girls were still menstruating despite living in the open in a terrible condition, and if your clothes smudged, it can mean you can not go to the distribution of food or water. And that can really hinder the survival and recovery, "Jemilah said.

"Try to position yourself in the same situation - go to the supermarket and your clothes smeared with menstrual blood," said Jemilah told reporters via a remote briefing in the United States. (AntaraNews)