El Siglo newspaper reports on the increasing number of Haitian women that take "tours" to give birth in the Hospital Regional Jose Maria Cabral y Baez, the leading public hospital in Santiago. The director of the center, Dr. Daniel Espinal says that in 2000, they attended over 1,200 Haitian women that showed up at the emergency halls about to give birth. He said that he has reports that they come as part of organized programs whereby they wait at the frontier until their labor pains intensify and then they are transported to the hospital. He said that each birth costs the hospital about RD$30,000, as most of the births have to be by c-section as the clinical history of the patients is unknown. The Haitians do not have to pay anything to give birth in the Santiago public hospital. El Siglo newspaper interviewed lawyer Henry Amboise, who is known to accompany several of the Haitians who come to give birth and he said that the hospital has great repute among Haitians. "I always bring my Haitian brothers to this hospital because here they are treated well as humans, and the physicians attend them without any discrimination," said Amboise, a Haitian who works as a language teacher, after being exiled in the DR.
