Nine months pregnant with her first child, Chona de la Cruz, 30, waded through murky flood waters amid heavy rain to reach a government hospital in Manila's suburban Cainta district. But the hospital, which was partly submerged by floods brought by tropical storm Ketsana on 26 September, was overwhelmed and almost turned her away.
"I don't want to deliver my baby in an evacuation camp," De la Cruz sobbed, as more than 500 other pregnant women crowded the Bagong Cainta Municipal Hospital seeking medical and hygiene kits. "This is my first time to be a mother and I don't know what to do."
De la Cruz and her husband, a construction worker, had been crammed into an evacuation camp with more than 800 people in a covered basketball court at Lakas-Tao, a Cainta slum. Some areas were still submerged in sludgy water more than two weeks after Ketsana hit.
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