There are already more than Dominicans in the waiting room of maternity wards in the Dominican northwest, a region that welcomes immigrants and also a destination for women crossing the border to give birth in increasingly crowded hospitals.
In the public hospital of Guayubín, a small town surrounded by banana and rice plantations, 26 miles east of the Masacre River, the natural border between the two countries, nine out of ten working women are Haitian, the highest percentage in the entire Dominican Republic Republic.
SATURATED HOSPITALS
The women are in a small hospital where they are cared for, regardless of their origin, but they are overburdened, understaffed and infirm.
The operating room and laboratory are poorly equipped, the incubator is broken and there is no blood bank, making a transfusion impossible.
The hospital’s director, Maira Rodríguez, explains that the budget is calculated on the basis of the local population, without taking into account the number of undocumented immigrants living in the area, nor the number of mothers crossing the border in full. labor. so the money is not enough.
The doctor assures that, despite the difficulties, a patient “never returns” unless they have medical complications and must be referred to a better equipped hospital, such as the one in the city of Mao, the reference framework for the entire region. .
MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS
“From 90 to 95% of complications are in foreign patients,” said Dr. Juan de la Cruz Rodríguez Pérez, director of the José Francisco Peña Gómez de Mao Maternal and Child Hospital.
Most newly arrived Haitian women, she explains, often have anemia or other medical conditions that have not been previously treated.
Many of those living in the Dominican Republic who have multiple doctors, either because of mistrust or because they don’t spend money, are reluctant to follow the treatments that diagnose them.
The result is a very high rate of complications during childbirth and, as a result, a high mortality rate.
“What’s worse, in the Dominican Republic, maternal mortality is very high. And 47% of all maternity is Haitian citizens,” Mario Lama, director of the National Health System (SNS), explains to Efe.
TRIPLE WORK IN TEN YEARS
The number of Haitian women giving birth has tripled in a decade to 30,322 births in 2020, which is equivalent to 27% of births in the country as a whole, meaning between 10% and 14% of the country’s total hospital budget devoted to foreign women, according to calculations of the SNS.
Haitian births are over 50% across the border area and also in La Altagracia (east), a province that is receiving growing immigration, mainly due to the construction of new hotels in Punta Cana.
To appease the spirits of the most nationalist sectors, President Luis Abinader announced an agreement with Haiti two weeks ago to help its poor neighbor build hospitals and stop the movement of working women across borders.
According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 4,073 pregnant Haitians entered the Dominican Republic in 2020, despite the border being officially closed for nine months due to the pandemic.
A MORE COMPLEX PROBLEM
However, doctors in border hospitals confirm that the majority of working women who receive them are residents of the Dominican Republic.
“Almost 70% live here and 30% come to what they call the bed to give birth here and take the newspaper to report the baby,” says Dr. Domingo Guzmán Abreu, Chief Midwife at Guayubín Hospital.
Jandrine Bernabé, 22, is one of them. With her second newborn in her arms, she says she has lived “for many years” in the Dominican Republic, although she has never been issued a residence permit.
He assures that because he is undocumented, he “ever” had problems getting medical care; “but it’s not that difficult,” he adds.
All of the Haitian women who agreed to speak to Efe at the hospitals of Guayubín and Mao stated that they live in the Dominican Republic, but not all of them wanted to tell their story.