Just Send Her to Die?

Jemena’s two-pound premature baby is still in the incubator. The hospital said that they will release her when she reaches three pounds, at which point she will still have to receive round-the-clock care in order to stay healthy in her fragile state.

Checking the teeth of a child complaining of pain.

In this photo I am checking the teeth of one of the baby’s sisters.

The little girl’s parents are right to be concerned about their daughter’s health.  We’ve had babies like this before, and they do die from exposure, lack of sanitation, and malnutrition brought about by the impoverished conditions in which their family lives.  That said, she cannot be left at the hospital. They will treat her as abandoned, and after our last run-in with the nurses there, we must be legitimately concerned for the baby’s safety.  We don’t have any facilities to take care of her in the town. The only solution we can think of is to pay somebody to care for the baby until she is strong enough to go to her parent’s home.  Unfortunately, that requires a willing party, and yet more money…

These are the problems you find when you really get the level of the people we serve and try to make an honest difference in their lives.  The task is not easy, and we need your help more than ever as we work to improve both the present and the future for this community.

A Dead Baby, Now Alive, and Human Traffic

Last Monday our Human Rights monitor went to the town of Barahona to pick up Jemena and her new daughter. We found that the hospital staff had sent Jemena home, without calling us or giving the mother access to a telephone, and told her that the baby had died.

Our Human Rights monitor knew enough about the questionable activities that take place at these hospitals to not accept this answer. She demanded to see the baby’s body as proof that it had died. When the hospital could not produce a body, she pushed her way into the maternity ward, where she saw the baby alive, and still on the incubator. We are still trying to figure out why the hospital lied to us, but what we’ve learned so far is that one of the nurses wanted to take the baby to sell it, and that she was the one who sent the mother home. We are still not clear if they told Jemena that they would ‘adopt’ or ‘take care of’ the baby, as our Haitian monitor has not yet interviewed the mother.  We hope to have a more clear picture of what happened once the Haitian monitor interviews the mother, and the Dominican monitor finds out exactly what happened at the hospital.  We are still trying to get all the details before we refer the matter to the city prosecutor’s office.

For now, we have assumed complete care of the baby, and are paying for the milk, diapers, and supplies until she can leave the incubator and we can reunite her with her family. The baby still weighs only 2-lbs. Our monitor is going to the hospital again on Monday to monitor its progress.

The father of the baby told us that he is afraid such a delicate baby will die if brought to their home (see their home on our pesticide tanks and water post), and asked us if we could take the baby permanently.  We understand his concerns, and hope to care for the baby until it is in better condition.  Once the baby has gained weight and appears healthy, we hope to work closely with Jemena and her husband to ensure that their daughter can grow up happily and healthily with her own family

On a good note, we were able to get the mother birth control surgery, on her request. This will be the last difficult pregnancy that Jemena will ever have to go through.

Of Means and Ends…

Our program has its own very precise goals, but in the process people benefit in ways not specifically outlined in our stated missions.

One of the most important people that works for us is illiterate, so we are providing her with materials and transportation to school three times a week.  This education will teach her to read and write well, an ability that few people in her community possess.  Even if Children of the Border suddenly lost all funding, and she no longer could work for us, she would still be left with an education and the power it gives her to get a better job, earn money, and defend the rights of her children.

First reading lesson.