In the Mamoudzou maternity ward, “the entire high-risk pregnancy wing and gynecological surgery department has become unsanitary. The false ceilings have fallen, the windows are blown out, there is water everywhere”described to Agence-France Presse the president of the departmental council of the order of midwives of Mayotte, Cloé Mandard, in conjunction with the hospital teams.
The building dedicated to consultations is also “unusable: no more ultrasound equipment, no more computers, no more examination tables… It’s going to be very problematic, because pregnancy, unfortunately, does not pause in the event of a disaster”she continued. The deliveries continue but “in more than degraded conditions”while the maternity ward usually manages “between 20 and 30 deliveries per day”.
In town too, « impossible » to take stock of the situation with private midwives or maternal and child protection services, due to the cutoff of telephone and road networks.
Cloé Mandard fears the influx, once the roads are reopened, of “wave of pregnant and injured women, or who gave birth alone” in poor sanitary conditions, and with high risks of complications.
