And so maternal mortality in Haiti
is really high, I mean it's on par with
Sub-Saharan Africa
and countries that are in a
really bad state. It's really
very very bad.
And there are a lot of reasons
why that's so
one is just
the general level of poor health care like lack
of health infrastructure so there are no places
for women to actually
go to get health care
the second issue is having to pay for health care
so user fees
are a major obstacle for
most women to actually come to the health center and get seen
transportation is really difficult, it's
you know mostly on donkeys or bare foot
over mountainous areas
and women, it's really difficult especially when you're pregnant and probably anemic
to try to walk in out of the clinic
to be seen for
you antenatal care then when you're actually in labor
that's the last time you want to like on a horse and come down to the clinic
especially in the rainy season, in the rainy season it’s muddy and really difficult to do it.
This is Fond Enfer,in French translation means 'the deep hell'.
It's really strange to see it now
it's just like a tiny little creek
but it really has a major impact on, you know
not just health but also on all the economic on the other side of the river
because what happens in the rainy season is, every afternoon around 3 or 4 o'clock it rains
and I think in part because of the erosion and the lack of
good soil in there up in the mountains,
the water rises really rapidly so
you can be standing here and it will start to rain, within 20 or 30 minutes
there's a flash flood and the water rises up really high.
I've personally seen two women who have died
because we weren't able to get them across the river
in time to have cesarean sections.
We have a lot of community will, like people will carry you,
people will carry the women across, but at a certain point it's just too dangerous for anyone to cross
so we can't do it.
Cange is a referral center for all of our other sites
so in Boucan Carré if we need a C-section we send then here.
So she knew she was going to have twins, they had told her
this makes six, she now has six children, she's twenty-eight.
The average birthrate
is about four or five and
the issues are really complicated
because women
don't always have
real control
socially over their fertility.
They're really highly dependent on men
for their economic standing.
And in unions
between men and women
it's pretty much expected from
the man that there will be a child,
that the woman will have a child for him.
So I've had women who have had 10 children already who come
and when I council them about family planning
they say well
I don't really want to do it yet, and when I delve a bit deeper
it's because maybe their previous partner died or their previous partner left them
and they're with a new partner and that new partner really wants to have a child with them
and so their option is to either not do that and risk him leaving
or do that, have a child with him,
and then have 11 children
but at least she hopes
that he will help to support those other children
so it's really quite complicated.
I think those are kind of the list of reasons of
why it's so hard for women
hard for women.
One of the ways that we've addressed it is obviously by
having no user fees for pregnant women so pregnant women in Zanmi Lasante don't even
pay the sixty cent
requirement that some people pay, so they're excluded from any fees whatsoever