Gizo, Solomon Islands – As flies buzzed around a basket of bloody gauze, Moana Saito nursed her newborn daughter, delivered Saturday in an open-air maternity ward near the epicenter of the Solomon Islands’ earthquake and tsunami.
Swaddled in tie-dyed muslin, the baby rested in Saito’s arms as she recovered on a wooden cot under a tarpaulin stretched over a metal clothes line.
“It’s lucky it’s not raining,” said the attending nurse, Vaelin Gagahe, who delivered Saito’s baby. The nurse has delivered three babies in two days at the makeshift network of tarpaulins and tents that sprung up to replace Gizo’s hospital, partially destroyed by Monday’s tsunami.
Health officials warn that without proper sanitation, the number of child deaths in the disaster zone could rise significantly. Unhygienic conditions and a lack of clean water have contributed to isolated cases of diarrhea and dysentery in some refugee camps, and international aid workers were digging latrines and setting up water purifiers.
Earlier last week, the United Nations warned that up to 30,000 children could be affected by the disaster, including 15,000 younger than 5.
“These children are highly vulnerable to hunger, disease and the disruption of their normal lives and protective social systems, and require urgent lifesaving assistance to survive,” the U.N. said.
Saito’s husband, a ship captain, was helping to unload relief supplies from a boat that arrived in Gizo early Saturday and had not yet seen his daughter – the couple’s first surviving child.
The 23-year-old mother went into labor just before dawn in the hillside camp where she and hundreds of others have taken refuge away from their low-lying homes, many of which were badly damaged by the 8.1-magnitude quake and the killer waves that followed.
Saito’s home was only partially damaged, but like many others, she has been too afraid to return because of the many aftershocks that have rattled the region.
She and her husband have no tent and have been sleeping in the open air. She is not sure whether they will return home now that their baby daughter has arrived.
The United Nations has set the death toll from Monday’s disaster at 34 people, while Solomons’ official toll is 28.
