Dire Situation For Expectant Mothers In Evacuation Camps In The Philippines

According to IRIN, in the Philippines there are an,

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.”