The director of the National Health Service (SNS), Nelson Rodríguez Monegro, says Haitians pay RD$5,000 to RD$10,000 for birthing tours to the Dominican Republic. He said public hospitals are full of the foreign mothers coming to give birth.
Rodríguez Monegro says the women are attracted by the quality of the birthing facilities in the Dominican Republic when compared to those they would receive in Haiti. The biggest draw, nevertheless, he says, is that here they do not have to pay for the services.
Furthermore, he said the birthing cartels offer the women the possibility of continuing to reside in the country.
He said the hospitals on border provinces, such as Independencia, Dajabon and Pedernales, report more births to Haitian mothers than to Dominican nationals.
Rodríguez Monegro alerted that so far this year there has been a considerable increase in the number of births to Haitian mothers. It is not possible that in the different controls on the roads from Haiti this can happen without complicity, he observes. He said it is not unusual that to a public hospital in Santiago on a single day 10 pregnant Haitian women ready to give birth arrive simultaneously.
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El Dia
24 August 2017
