In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, nearly 37,000 pregnant Haitian women face difficulties securing food, clean drinking water and access to health services, according to Frank Geneus, the director of health programs in Haiti for CARE, the Washington Post reports. Nearly 10,000 of those women may give birth in the next month. Women and children are especially vulnerable to disease and sexual exploitation under the deteriorating health and safety conditions in Port-au-Prince, the Post reports.

Even before the earthquake, Haitian women and girls faced a high risk for physical and sexual violence. A 2006 study by the Inter-American Development Bank found that one-third of Haiti's women and girls reported physical or sexual violence, with more than half of those younger than age 18. "We have to keep in mind that disasters make existing inequalities even worse," Marijke Velzeboer-Salcedo, a gender-issues expert for the Pan American Health Organization, said. "Those who are stronger and more powerful, whether physically or psychologically -- or both -- are going to have better access to scarce resources," she noted, adding that "when women are deprived of resources, entire families are likely to be deprived, too."

The Post reports on one post-earthquake Haitian maternity ward, a "courtyard filled with female patients lying on beds" with tarps shielding women and newborns from the elements and "[h]andwritten notes taped to the edges of beds reveal[ing] each patient's name and vital signs." Gina Pardo, an obstetrics and delivery nurse from New York who is working in the maternity ward, said that caregivers lack adequate supplies and have been using string to tie off umbilical cords (Labbe-DeBose, Washington Post, 1/28).

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