The announcement in April 2025 that Haitian women giving birth here could continue to do so but would be deported once they recovered has resulted in a considerable decline in births in Dominican public hospitals.
The director of the National Health Service (SNS) that coordinates public hospitals confirmed that the new migratory protocol being implemented has led to a dramatic decrease in births by Haitian women. He shared the statistics during an interview for the Weekly Lunch of the Corripio Communications Group.
Lama said that the new protocol for attending to foreign patients is aimed at making hospitals more sustainable and curbing what officials describe as a “mafia” facilitating these births.
Previously, some hospitals, like the Hospital General de Verón, serving the Punta Cana area, reported that 90% of births there were to Haitian women before the new measures took effect.
“In Verón, over 90% of births were to foreign Haitian women,” Lama stated, highlighting the significant strain the influx of foreign women placed on the country’s maternal and child health services. He explained that many hospitals were overwhelmed by the high volume of births from women traveling to the Dominican Republic specifically to give birth.
Nationwide, Haitian women accounted for 36.3% of all births in public hospitals in 2024, meaning more than one in three babies born in these facilities were to foreign mothers. “That means for every three births, one was to a foreign woman,” Lama clarified. This figure represents a notable increase from 23% recorded in 2019.
However, the landscape began to shift with the implementation of the migratory protocol on 21 April 2024. This initiative specifically targets 33 hospitals that previously handled 80% of births involving foreign women.
“In those 33 hospitals, before the protocol, 44% of births were to foreign women. Today, the figure is around 17% to 21%,” Lama detailed. He emphasized that these measures have resulted in a reduction of over 50% in maternity care for Haitian women in the prioritized centers. This significant drop, Lama noted, “confirms that many births were from women in transit who entered the country exclusively to give birth.”
Lama said that a significant number of these women were simply crossing the border solely to give birth in the Dominican Republic.
“If they are not giving birth in hospitals, and as we have investigated, they are not giving birth in clinics in that proportion, and they are not giving birth at home, because we also found that out, this translates to almost half of the births we were having in our hospitals being ‘in transit’ births,” Lama stated.
Lama also addressed the critical clinical implications of this trend, revealing a stark disparity in maternal mortality rates. The maternal mortality ratio for Haitian foreign women was 241 per 100,000 live births, compared to 101 for Dominican women.
“This means they arrive in deteriorated conditions, with many pre-existing conditions and without prenatal check-ups,” Lama warned. He underscored that in addition to the burden on the healthcare system, these factors significantly increase clinical risks for both mothers and newborns.
Lama highlighted that the influx of Haitian patients, particularly for childbirth, has long posed a growing challenge for the Dominican health system. Birthing at the Dominican hospitals was free given these women would arrive to the emergency rooms. The large number of complicated cases ate into public hospital finances.
Lama reiterated the SNS’s commitment to ensuring the sustainability of all hospitals and noted that all health zones have seen improvements since the implementation of the new measures.
Read more in Spanish:
El Dia
El Nacional
3 July 2025