Spike in deliveries strains maternity hospital in Haiti

On any given day at the three-story Doctors Without Borders Jude Anne Maternity Hospital in Haiti, women give birth on the floor. Often, the delivery ward is so crowded that some women don't even make it onto the sheetless plastic cots. The latest Haitian healthcare crisis began in October when doctors and nurses at the country's largest medical center went on strike. Haiti was still reeling from four successive storms and just emerging from a nearly five-month-old political stalemate. Two other public hospitals that care for pregnant women in the capital also would temporarily close. Suddenly, the doctors and midwives at Jude Anne found their caseloads multiplying.