Streets still ruined but baby boom offers fragile hope

HAITI’S streets still lie ruined a year after the earthquake which flattened its capital and left one million people homeless but the devastated country is experiencing a baby boom.

Much of the next generation is growing up among rubble and in makeshift camps but the small infants are a joy and sign of hope for shaken parents who survived the disaster a year ago.

Hospitals and maternity wards are packed but many newborns are threatened by disease and the recent outbreak of cholera has so far killed over 3,500 people.

A UN report in October confirmed that birth rates had shot up, nine months on from the earthquake.

The reproductive report concluded that birth rates in urban areas had tripled, moving from four per cent to 12.

“Baby units” have been set up by aid groups to help treat malnourished infants and offer worried mothers care for their sick children.

But the baby boom also means there will be more mouths to feed.

In the downtown general hospital at Port au Prince, a stabilisation unit run by Irish charity Concern is treating underweight babies and newborns with complex diseases and health problems.

Unit head Dr Erline Mesadieu Coulanges, 34, said: “Many children being brought to the unit are suffering from high fevers and breathing problems. We give them specialised foods, measure them and weigh them and help them get better.”

One young Haitian couple with a baby in a cot explained that since their child was born after the earthquake, the baby girl had suffered from blood problems and was very underweight.

“Her arms and legs became inflamed. I realised she was sick so came we here,” explained 20-year-old mother Kenatia Alphonse.

She had become pregnant in March, two months after the earthquake, but her baby was born premature in September.