Washington/Berlin (dpa) - Tens of thousands of women in Haiti have
severely limited access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, many
are compelled to trade sex for food and most are vulnerable to rape,
according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday.
More than 300,000 women and girls currently live in camps for
people impacted by the January 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed more
than 220,000 and displaced between 1.3-1.6 million. Even though most
healthcare is free in the camps, women have not benefited because of
a lack of information about facilities and poor transportation.
At 630 per 100,000 live births, Haiti had the highest maternal
mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere before the earthquake. The
current rate is unknown, and there is little tracking of maternal or
infant deaths in the camps.
What is known is that too many women are delivering babies
unassisted in tents, alleys, en route to hospital, without drugs, and
they are dying because of the delays in receiving adequate care.
"I just gave birth on the ground ... I had no drugs for pain
during delivery," said Mona, who moved to a camp in a suburb of
capital Port-au-Prince with her husband and children.
HRW executive director, Kenneth Roth, said: "More than a year and
half after the earthquake, some women and girls give birth unattended
on the muddy floors of tents or trade sex for food without any
protection from unwanted pregnancy."
For its 78-page report, entitled Nobody Remembers Us, HRW
interviewed 158 women and girls aged 14-42 years in 15 camps, and
said the crisis they faced was reflected in pregnancy rates in the
camps that were three times higher than in urban areas before the
earthquake.
Gheslaine, a single mother of three, said: "People will try to
survive by the way they can. Women have relationships with men so
they can feed their children ...
"Unfortunately, women sometimes get pregnant, but if we had access
to planning we'd protect ourselves ... It's not good to make
prostitution, but what can you do? You have to eat."
Margalie, a camp committee member, confirmed the presence of
transactional and survival sex in the Croix-des-Bouquets camp: "One
hundred and fifty babies have been born in this camp. Eighty-three
women are pregnant, some of them are girls, because their parents
don't take care of them so they look for a man to survive ...
"But the men don't actually take care of them. As soon as they
hear the girl is pregnant, they just leave her."
Women's groups have reported a high incidence of rape in the
camps, and victims don't have access to emergency contraception and
other post-rape care that is available in some health facilities, HRW
said. Many lack funds to travel to clinics.
About 5.3 billion dollars was pledged by donors for Haiti's
recovery, of which 258 million dollars was for healthcare. "With
almost 260 million dollars earmarked for health care, no woman should
have to give birth on the street," Roth said.
The problem for many displaced women is that they no longer live
in areas where they knew how to access healthcare or centres they
were familiar with were destroyed in the earthquake.
Anita, 27, said, "I go by foot to the hospital. It is a three-hour
walk ... I don't have money to pay for a car. When I am in labour, I
hope someone will pay for me."
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