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heAlth Friday 18 November 2022
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U.S. home births rise in pandemic, to highest level in HEALTH

decades DOCTOR ON DUTY

Oranjestad
By LINDSEY TANNER Hospital 7:00 pm / 10:00pm
AP Medical Writer Tel. 527 4000
U.S. home births increased San Nicolas
slightly in the pandemic’s Imsan 24 hours
second year, rising to the Tel.524 8833
highest level in decades, Women in Difficulties
according to a govern- PHARMACY ON DUTY
ment report published Oranjestad:
Thursday. Dakota Tel. 588 7364
Among almost 4 million San Nicolas:
births in 2021, nearly 52,000 San Lucas Tel. 584 5119
occurred at home, the Women in Difficulties
Centers for Disease Con- OTHER
trol and Prevention report Dental Clinic 587 9850
showed. That’s up about Blood Bank Aruba 587 0002
12% from 2020, following a Urgent Care 586 0448
Walk-In Doctor’s Clinic
22% rise from 2019 to 2020. +297 588 0539
Increases were seen Women in Difficulties
across races and ethnici- EMERGENCY
ties, although home births
were much less common Police 100
Oranjestad
527 3140
among Hispanic women Noord 527 3200
than others. Sta. Cruz 527 2900
Elizabeth Gregory, the re- San Nicolas 584 5000
port’s lead author, said Police Tipline 11141
reasons for the increases Ambulancia 911
are unknown, but they oc- Fire Dept. 115
582 2219
Red Cross
curred when COVID-19
rates were high and vacci- TAXI SERVICES
nations were either unavail- Taxi Tas 587 5900
able or not widely used. Prof. Taxi 588 0035
Other reports have shown In this photo provided by Mark Godbolt Jr., his wife, Jade Godbolt, nurses her newborn child at Taxi D.T.S. 587 2300
Taxi Serv. Aruba 583 3232
that many people avoid- their Dallas-area home in October 2022. A1 Taxi Serv. 280 2828
ed hospital and doctor vis- Associated Press Women in Difficulties
its early in the pandemic. TRAVEL INFO
Other possible reasons: Obstetricians and Gyne- ean section. stetric practice and chief
Women lacked health in- cologists notes that while “Hospitals and accredited of obstetrics and gyne- Aruba Airport 524 2424
surance or lived far from home births typically in- birth centers are the saf- cology at Massachusetts American Airlines 582 2700
a hospital and couldn’t volve fewer medical pro- est places to give birth, General Hospital.q Avianca 588 0059
make it there in time. Previ- cedures than hospital because although serious Jet Blue 588 2244
582 7896
Surinam
ous research suggests that births, they’re riskier. It ad- complications associated
about 1 in 4 home births vises against home births with labor and delivery are Women in Difficulties
are unplanned. for certain situations in- rare, they can be cata- AID FOUNDATIONS
Jade Godbolt, of Dallas, cluding multiple births and strophic,’’ said Dr. Jeffrey FAVI- Visually Impaired
had her second child at among women who previ- Ecker, a former chair of the Tel. 582 5051
a birthing center in 2021, ously delivered via cesar- group’s committee on ob- Alcoholics Anonymous
partly to avoid hospital Tel. 736 2952
risks of COVID-19 and to Narcotics Anonymous
experience a more natural Tel. 583 8989
environment. The experi- Fundacion Contra Violencia
ence went so well that she Relacional Tel. 583 5400
and her husband chose a Centre for Diabetes
Tel. 524 8888
home birth for their third, Child Abuse Prevention
a son born last month. Tel. 582 4433
They’d been working with Quota Club Tel. 525 2672
a midwife but labor went Women in Difficulties
so fast that the baby came General Info
before she arrived. Phone Directory Tel. 118
Godbolt, a 31-year-old
beauty and lifestyle online
content creator, says there
were no complications
and she and her son are
doing well.
“I believed that my body
could do what it was made
to do and I wanted to be in
the comfort of my home to
do that,’’ she said.
The American College of facebook.com/arubatoday/