Haitian mothers in labor arrive very sick

Of the almost 3,000 Haitian women in labor that the San Lorenzo de Los Mina maternity hospital received last year, the majority suffered from severe anemia, hemorrhages, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and infections.

This population consumes the greatest amount of resources, said the director of the center, Dr. Leonardo Aquino.

Last year there were a total of 2,485 births of foreign nationals, 1,567 vaginal deliveries, and 918 cesarean sections, representing 46.2% of attendance at the center.

So far this year 2022, between the months of January and February, at least 524 deliveries and 180 cesarean sections have been performed in this population, said, Aquino.

The Haitian parturients also arrive with cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, severe malnutrition, sexually transmitted diseases, some are adolescents, and there are language barriers and psychiatric disorders, said the official.

For the authorities it is important to note that as a result of all the comorbidities with which the foreign patients arrive, they lead to prematurity, with all the consequences derived from it, which increases the high rate of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit, contributing to perinatal morbimortality.

This exacerbates national mortality figures.

Access is not limited
“Our center has no limits for the care of users, regardless of ethnicity, race, social status, creed, or nationality,” Aquino assures.

She insists that foreign parturients are attended with a high degree of humanity, quality, and warmth of health services. This is demonstrated in the achievement of the processes, in the thousands of admissions to the whole society and from which the patients who seek services do not escape, regardless of nationality.

But it is necessary to take measures

Costs assumed by the State
The foreign parturients, contrary to the Dominican citizens, do not have medical insurance, they have no money, but this has not prevented them from receiving the necessary care, and in view of the morbidity conditions in which they arrive at the hospital San Lorenzo de Los Mina, the center has been forced to make excessive expenditures of resources to meet the needs of this population.