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Women, Children Suffer as Health Care Resources go to Fight COVID

Carol Pearson

   WASHINGTON - The coronavirus pandemic has caused more than half a
   million deaths so far in its sweep around the world. What isn't
   included in this figure is the impact on the health of mothers and
   children who don't have the virus but are suffering.

   For a real-life example of this situation, go to Nairobi at night
   during the government-imposed curfew.

   There, a woman is in labor. If she doesn't get to a hospital, she will
   give birth at home without a midwife.

   "Every time I went to the hospital," Dr. Jemimah Kariuki, an
   obstetrician-gynecologist at Nairobi's Kenyatta Hospital told Reuters
   News Service, "[there were]more complications '¦ and when women died
   alone in childbirth, I was like 'in 2020?' You are dying? Alone?"

   Kariuki helped start a free ambulance service so women could get to the
   hospital and improve the likelihood that they and their babies would
   survive.

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