Tsunami May Yield Baby Boom
By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - With the birth of her first child just one
month away, Wadiana Wahab worries about the world her baby will enter.
She mainly eats rice and instant noodles and has no money for a crib,
diapers or baby clothes. And while she expects to deliver at a hospital,
she will likely return to the sweltering tent she calls home.
"I never imagined it would be like this," said Wahab, 23,
at a makeshift camp for about 5,000 refugees in Banda Aceh, the capital
of Indonesia's tsunami-hit Aceh province. "It's already eight months
and we have bought nothing for the baby."
With the threat of epidemics abating and injured survivors treated,
one of the most pressing medical needs emerging is also one of the most
basic: ensuring pregnant women stay healthy and deliver safely.
Indonesia, the country most devastated by the Dec. 26 earthquake and
killer waves, is girding for a baby boom in Aceh's squalid refugee camps
and villages. Some experts say that birth rates among tsunami survivors
may rise as parents who lost children try to rebuild their families.
Pregnant women comprise about 25,000, or 6 percent, of some 400,000
refugees in Aceh's camps, the United Nations (news - web sites) says.
Every month, some 800 babies are expected to be born in the province,
on the northern tip of Sumatra island.
The figures are similar in Sri Lanka, an island nation off the coast
of India, where as many as 5,000 will be delivered in the next few months,
the United Nations says.
"What can we say to them? They want someone to continue the family
line," said Sri Setiyati, a midwife in Banda Aceh. "It is
their right to have children. We can only advise them to wait."
Despite a massive international relief effort, Aceh's devastated public
health system is ill-equipped to handle the births. Though a few hospitals
have reopened, smaller clinics remain shuttered. Once abdundant, midwives
are now scarce, many of them killed when the sea surged.
"The (pregnant) women here are in a bad shape," said Henia
Dakkak, a public health specialist with the U.N. Population Fund in
Banda Aceh. "If we don't start to do something in a few weeks,
then we are endangering people's lives."
Health workers say most pregnant women in Aceh are not eating enough
protein, meaning they may have underweight babies or may become anemic
and bleed to death during labor.
Indonesian and U.N. authorities say a shortage of contraceptives means
that many women in the camps will have unwanted pregnancies.
Still, things have improved since the disaster's immediate aftermath
when many women gave birth without any medical supervision, often in
unsanitary conditions in refugee camps.
Midwives flown into Aceh from Jakarta now routinely call on Wadiana
and the 40 other pregnant women in her camp. A car is on call to take
them to a health clinic, if needed. And a freshly painted maternity
unit has just reopened in the city's public hospital, parts of which
remain covered in thick mud washed in by waves.
In Sri Lanka, most refugee camps have access to a doctor. U.N. officials
have provided hospitals with 300 emergency reproductive health kits,
which include equipment to perform cesarean sections and blood transfusions
and treat miscarriages.
For Wadiana, it's not just about health care, though. She said it pains
her to think about being unable to prepare for the new member of her
family.
"Before the tsunami, we were getting excited and readying the house
for the birth," she said. "Now all I can do is sit here."
