ARTICLE - D.R HOSPITAL - 20% HAITIANS

SANTIAGO HOSPITAL SPENDS 20% OF ITS BUDGET ON HAITIANS
(Diario Libre) -

In addition, 19% of the childbirths are from Haitian mothers

SANTIAGO - About 20% of the budget of the Jose Maria Cabral y Baez Regional University Hospital is spent on attention given to Haitian women who are giving birth, which represents an economic burden for the medical center.

At the present time the center receives a monthly subsidy of RD$10,000,000 of which RD$2,000,000 is spent on Haitian births.

The information was offered by the hospital spokesman Sergio Garcia, who said that 19% of the children born in the hospital are from women from the neighboring country.

"The doctors that work in the hospital offer services to all the pregnant women that come in, no matter what their nationality," he said.

About 90 Haitians give birth each month in Cabral y Baez (as it is popularly known) in Santiago, an average of three a day, and many of them cross the frontier without any documents, according to the statistics of the center.

The reports also indicate that in 2009 there were 5,877 births, of which 1,099 were of Haitian women. In 2010 there were 1,150 Haitian births, and in 2011 there were 1,250 births from these women. Garcia said that these foreigner are not given any sort of document because they do not have the authority to do so, although the birth is registered on the hospital books. The spokesman said that as a requirement of the hospital the Dominican patients have to present their personal identification cards-the cédulas-or some other document that identifies them and the foreigners are asked for their passports.

He underlined the fact that in the hospital there is an office of civil registration, but it is a branch of the Central Electoral Board, and not a part of the hospital itself.

The Cabral y Baez Hospital is the largest in the Cibao, and hospitalizes approximately 23,000 patients a year, of which 10,000 are obstetrics patients.

A third of the pregnancies are adolescent girls.

And in 2011, they attended 172,000 general consultations, and there were 105,000 emergencies.