By Karla E General
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti has long been noted as the leader in maternal mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere, with 670 women dying from pregnancy-related factors for every 100,000 live births in Haiti in 2006. One of the major players in this phenomenon? Complete lack of, or (if the mother is fortunate enough to be admitted to a hospital), inadequate health care.

With a maternal death rate that comes nowhere near the United States’ (11 deaths for every 100,000 live births), Haiti is under attack from the international medical community to provide better services in their maternity wards. Wendy Lai of Doctors Without Borders (Holland) calls the situation “embarrassing to the Western world…[T]hese are preventable deaths.” According to Jacqueline Ramon, a maternity ward nurse at Port-Au-Prince’s General Hospital, women still must pay for all other childbirth-related costs – such as medical supplies, food and transportation – leading many to turn to untrained midwives who use traditional medicine.

Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard physician, expressed frustration at Haiti’s blatant denial of adequate health care to low-income pregnant women: “It’s never, ever going to work unless we say some things are not meant to be sold, and safe motherhood is one of them.” Farmer added that in rural towns where his nonprofit organization Partners in Health provides free health care, the maternal mortality rate is less than one-tenth the national average.

Comprehensive health care for all pregnant women in Haiti would cost about $40 million annually, a drop in the bucket for a basic human right.
For more information, please see:

San Francisco Chronicle – Childbirth Dangerous Business for Haiti’s Poor – 22 March 2009

Medical News Today – AP/Washington Times Examines Factors Behind High Maternal Mortality in Haiti – 19 March 2009

Washington Times – Childbirth Danger Rampant in Haiti – 17 March 2009