Birthing Hope Amidst the Storm
When Typhoon Odette reached the country, Mariel was due to give birth at any moment. Women’s Health on Wheels is giving mothers like her a chance to welcome their newborns towards a more hopeful future.
8 June 2022Surviving a super typhoon is a difficult ordeal for anyone to go through. For Mariel, a mother from St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, it was all the more difficult as she was due to give birth when the typhoon hit the country.
Typhoon Odette left nothing for Mariel and her family. Their house was destroyed and even their local regional health center in St. Bernard was not spared. Traveling to nearby health centers was not possible because of the destruction post-typhoon.
Still, help found its way to the people of St. Bernard. Mariel was the first woman to have given birth in Women’s Health on Wheels (WHoW) and one of the many others who received medical attention in the mobile clinic.
“When Typhoon Odette came, there was no place I could go to for a check-up. Thankfully, WHoW stayed here longer and helped me give birth. It was such a big help for me when WHoW came here.”
The mobile sexual and reproductive health clinic has been stationed in different parts of Southern Leyte, providing basic and various reproductive health services to the women in remote areas impacted by the typhoon. The mobile truck, funded by UNFPA, has catered to a total of 30 barangays in Southern Leyte to date.
Mariel is thankful for the care she has received from the staff of WhoW. She continues, “WHoW has been such a big help to us. I’m very grateful to all the staff, for helping and taking care of me. The nurses were all kind and great, too. I want to thank them for being here.”
When asked about her chosen name for her daughter, Mariel said, “We planned to name our baby ‘Heart,’ but they asked if we would also want to add ‘UN Faye’ to her name because UNFPA was one of the organizations seen on the truck. My husband agreed to the idea, and so we named her ‘Heart Eunne Faye.’”
In the future, she looks forward to telling Heart Eunne that she was born in the WHoW mobile clinic. Mariel hopes that baby Heart will grow up to be a kind and strong person.
The Women’s Health on Wheels Initiative is part of the coordinated emergency response to areas affected by Typhoon Odette, made possible with funding from the United Nations Central Emergency Fund (UN CERF) and UNFPA Philippines. The program is implemented by the Philippine Society for Responsible Parenthood, Inc.
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