Nine months pregnant with her first child, Chona de la Cruz, 30, waded through murky flood waters amid heavy rain to reach a government hospital in Manila's suburban Cainta district.
But the hospital, which was partly submerged by floods brought by tropical storm Ketsana on 26 September, was overwhelmed and almost turned her away.
"I don't want to deliver my baby in an evacuation camp," De la Cruz sobbed, as more than 500 other pregnant women crowded the Bagong Cainta Municipal Hospital seeking medical and hygiene kits. "This is my first time to be a mother and I don't know what to do."
De la Cruz and her husband, a construction worker, had been crammed into an evacuation camp with more than 800 people in a covered basketball court at Lakas-Tao, a Cainta slum. Some areas were still submerged in sludgy water more than two weeks after Ketsana hit.
When the flood waters first rose, her husband found a tyre tube, which they used to float through neck-deep waters to safety. "But it was too cold and I spent many hours in the water. I am afraid I may have caught diseases," she said.
Nearby, Racquel Pascual, 21, eight months pregnant with her fifth child, and all her belongings washed away - including the money she had saved for the birth – said she too had nowhere to go.
"I am resigned to the fact that I may give birth in an evacuation centre, and my poor baby may get infections there," she said.
Neglected
The women are only two of the estimated 14,000 pregnant women exposed to septic surroundings at evacuation camps. Their plight has been neglected as an overwhelmed government struggles to come to terms with the magnitude of the flooding.
After Ketsana, super-typhoon Parma slammed into northern Luzon island on 3 October, bringing week-long rains that triggered heavy landslides and flooding, further deepening the crisis. The death toll from Parma has reached almost 300, while the toll from Ketsana is 337, the government said.
More than 6.3 million people have been affected by the killer storms, over 400,000 of whom are in evacuation centres. Many areas were still isolated by landslides as of 12 October, and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the US military have scheduled airlifting tonnes of food to the devastated areas.
When Ketsana hit, the priority was to save those trapped by the floods, then find evacuation sites for the hundreds of thousands who lost their homes. And with much of the health infrastructure destroyed in Manila's eastern suburbs, these pregnant women have been largely neglected, the UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) Philippines country director, Suneeta Mukherjee, told IRIN.
"They are very vulnerable because they can't stop from delivering when their time comes," Mukherjee said. "The number one problem is that the whole thing could be septic, the mother and the baby could get infected and die."
Appeal for help
Mukherjee said UNFPA had done rapid assessments of various evacuation camps, and linked up with volunteer organizations, including enlisting the help of an association of midwives, who have been dispatched to selected areas.
"There are a lot of pregnant and post-partum women in the evacuation centres who do not have access to prenatal, natal and post-natal care. We cannot allow this situation to continue," Mukherjee said.
Cainta's municipal health chief, Glenda Abellanosa, said that only three of the area's 27 free health centres were still standing. With medical workers themselves left homeless, she said all international help was welcome.
"Many of these pregnant women may return to their homes, and we will not be able to monitor them," she told IRIN. "We want to help everyone, but we simply can't, because we have gone beyond our capacity."
jg/ey/mw
But the hospital, which was partly submerged by floods brought by tropical storm Ketsana on 26 September, was overwhelmed and almost turned her away.
"I don't want to deliver my baby in an evacuation camp," De la Cruz sobbed, as more than 500 other pregnant women crowded the Bagong Cainta Municipal Hospital seeking medical and hygiene kits. "This is my first time to be a mother and I don't know what to do."
De la Cruz and her husband, a construction worker, had been crammed into an evacuation camp with more than 800 people in a covered basketball court at Lakas-Tao, a Cainta slum. Some areas were still submerged in sludgy water more than two weeks after Ketsana hit.
When the flood waters first rose, her husband found a tyre tube, which they used to float through neck-deep waters to safety. "But it was too cold and I spent many hours in the water. I am afraid I may have caught diseases," she said.
Nearby, Racquel Pascual, 21, eight months pregnant with her fifth child, and all her belongings washed away - including the money she had saved for the birth – said she too had nowhere to go.
"I am resigned to the fact that I may give birth in an evacuation centre, and my poor baby may get infections there," she said.
Photo: Jason Gutierrez/IRIN  |
| Volunteer midwives help deliver a baby at a makeshift delivery room near an overcrowded evacuation site in a slum area in the Philippines |
The women are only two of the estimated 14,000 pregnant women exposed to septic surroundings at evacuation camps. Their plight has been neglected as an overwhelmed government struggles to come to terms with the magnitude of the flooding.
After Ketsana, super-typhoon Parma slammed into northern Luzon island on 3 October, bringing week-long rains that triggered heavy landslides and flooding, further deepening the crisis. The death toll from Parma has reached almost 300, while the toll from Ketsana is 337, the government said.
More than 6.3 million people have been affected by the killer storms, over 400,000 of whom are in evacuation centres. Many areas were still isolated by landslides as of 12 October, and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the US military have scheduled airlifting tonnes of food to the devastated areas.
When Ketsana hit, the priority was to save those trapped by the floods, then find evacuation sites for the hundreds of thousands who lost their homes. And with much of the health infrastructure destroyed in Manila's eastern suburbs, these pregnant women have been largely neglected, the UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) Philippines country director, Suneeta Mukherjee, told IRIN.
"They are very vulnerable because they can't stop from delivering when their time comes," Mukherjee said. "The number one problem is that the whole thing could be septic, the mother and the baby could get infected and die."
Appeal for help
Mukherjee said UNFPA had done rapid assessments of various evacuation camps, and linked up with volunteer organizations, including enlisting the help of an association of midwives, who have been dispatched to selected areas.
"There are a lot of pregnant and post-partum women in the evacuation centres who do not have access to prenatal, natal and post-natal care. We cannot allow this situation to continue," Mukherjee said.
Cainta's municipal health chief, Glenda Abellanosa, said that only three of the area's 27 free health centres were still standing. With medical workers themselves left homeless, she said all international help was welcome.
"Many of these pregnant women may return to their homes, and we will not be able to monitor them," she told IRIN. "We want to help everyone, but we simply can't, because we have gone beyond our capacity."
jg/ey/mw
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
Share this article
