The World's Busiest Maternity Ward

BBC2 9pm tonight

ABOUT THIS PROGRAMME

"On a busy day 100 babies are born at Manila's Dr Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital and women in labour lie four or five to a bed. Anita Rani travels to the capital of the Philippines to see how the countries of the developing world are facing a future with a rapidly growing population and follows the lives of three expectant mothers. Rosalyn's seventh child will have to survive on less than £1 a day, while middle-class Rose can afford the best care in the world and Junalyn is embarking on a journey out of the slums to a better life.

Part of the "This World" strand."

http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/cpsbsk/this-world--worlds-busiest-maternity-ward

Well worth a watch, I thought. This wasnt just about the hospital and the number of births there, it was as much about the changes going on in the Philippines and the changing fortunes of the population.


DURATION: 1 HOUR

The head nurse in Manila's busiest maternity ward estimates that she has delivered 200,000 babies during her career. On a busy day, a hundred babies are born at the Jose Fabella hospital and women in labour lie four or five to a bed.

"Anita Rani travels to the crazy crowded capital of the Philippines, to see how the countries of the developing world are facing a future with a rapidly growing population by following the lives of three different women. Rosalyn, whose seventh child will have to survive on less than a pound a day; Rose, a middle-class mum who can afford the best care in the world; and Junalyn, on a journey out of the slums to a better life.

Amid the drama of new life Anita finds a story of economic growth and hope in Manila. Across the developing world birth rates have plummeted, life expectancy has increased and young vibrant workforces are beginning to compete with the established economies of the West"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03gm0ym

Worth watching on iPlayer. It had an upbeat feel to it despite the gloomy title.

I watched it by accident. Very interesting.

My wife reckons the girl only got the job because "the bloody television cameras were there".

I also wondered about the influence of the program on her sucsess .

I thought the messages were confused on the one hand talking about the population increasing by 50% in the next 30 years and on the other declining birth rates.

just loved the laser underarm whitening not

my missus said she found it "terrible" on all levels I guess.

the sugesstion that an ever increasing expansion of consumption will drag the poorest up out of poverty is a cruel and bankrupt lie resources will grow scarcer and costs will rise permanent "growth" is an illusion.

I dont think there is really a middle class in the way that was suggested as teachers and doctors and even call centers are in the 12-17000 a month range perhaps thats exceeded in manila but then living costs are higher too.

The young guy in the call center that was sending three siblings through school while laudable is still living at the poverty line and one serious illness in the family is wipeout.

Untill resources are more equally shared and the population escapes the spiral of large families living hand to mouth nothing significant will change, regardless of a few folk relative to the population base earning big money

There was another element to the program which was that the signs were that the population, including the ever increasing numbers of "middle class" as they called them ( they even used the expression "yuppies" ), were turning a corner on numbers of children per family. This is certainly true of my wife's family for whom the penny has dropped.

My wifes sister earns considerably more than 17000 and she is a teacher in Cavite.

I see its gone up a bit since i last looked

New teachers in public schools in the Philippines today receive a monthly pay of P15,649 ($348), an amount that is obviously barely enough.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/38540...teachers-salary-filed-in-philippine-congress/

She isnt a new teacher. Probably been teaching for 4 or 5 years now. And teaches in a private school ie what we know here in the UK as a private school.

is there a link online where I can watch this?

When I graduated from Uni, my first job paid me Php15k a month and it was pretty good for my degree and being a fresh grad. Unfortunately, you won't get more than this salary unless you are really smart, in an in demand field or work in a call center.

It's not easy to find a good job if you aren't competitive. I interned for a popular multi national company and my HR interns would tell me that they sort our CV's as - 1. UP, 2. ADMU and DLSU, 3. Others.

Can you watch youtube as it is on there, I think.

Nope. Sorry. But if you can get access to BBC iPlayer then I think you will be able to watch it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen/tv/episode/b03gm0ym/This_World_Worlds_Busiest_Maternity_Ward

I'm not in the UK so shame about that. I did read the article though and it's pretty sad. Can't help but compare how ST. Luke's is so posh compared to Fabella and how they can make use of all the extra beds.

It's tough being poor in the Philipines

So, were you at UP ? If so then there is a good chance that you wont have to do the english language test for a spouse or fiancee visa.

An interesting take on the program....

"There is a maternity hospital in Manila where women in labour routinely sit four to a bed, where an experienced midwife might deliver upwards of 200,000 babies in her career. It's known as "the world's busiest maternity ward" and there's none of your "birthing plan" nonsense here.

Dr Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital sounds like it would make a great subject for a documentary, doesn't it? Sadly, the makers of the This World series on population thought they had a better idea.

In the waiting room, presenter Anita Rani got talking to Rosalyn, soon to give birth to her seventh child, who will live, along with the rest of the family, in a single room in the densely populated slum area of Tondo. Junalyn also lives in the slums, but she was putting off pregnancy in hope of securing a life-changing job at an international banking firm."


Read More:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...in-worlds-busiest-maternity-ward-8916506.html

The strange thing is that we are questioning the use of the words "middle class" because they appear to be earning far less than their western counterparts. But surely, because the type of salaries that we have been quoting go a lot further over there than here, then that "middle class" tag is still appropriate. Also how do we define "middle class"? Just on salary alone?

Another point is that somebody must be buying all the goods in the many malls in the Philippines. There must be more than a small minority of rich persons keeping these big malls afloat?


Manila Times
by MIKE WOOTTON
VIEWS FROM A BRIT


"To engender real economic development, a middle class is an important ingredient. A middle class is basically defined as the socioeconomic group between the working class and the aristocracy or upper class. Such a definition is not very helpful in understanding what a middle class is, and how it can be an important contributor to economic development. The term varies significantly between cultures, and what is often misunderstood is that it is not simply defined in financial terms (a problem for the Philippines where almost everything is defined in financial terms!)."

"To take the financial definition, middle class is comprised of people who have discretionary disposable income and therefore have the ability to make choices about their lifestyle and children’s upbringing, as they have enough money to cover their basic needs for food and shelter. About 33 percent of income as discretionary is a rough criterion.
But to be middle class is defined on more measures than purely money. There are middle class values which include education and knowledge attainment, a sense of entitlement for one’s position in society [a type of self-confidence], an appreciation of morality, art and culture, the type of people who are “friends” and, most importantly, the way in which children are brought up. All this could be termed human capital to differentiate it from the money measure.
So how does this fit with the Philippines? The Economist has reported that Asia has a very large and fast growing middle class, but this seems to have been measured mainly in financial terms rather than taking too much account of the human capital aspect. To be able to amass money is in itself not a measure of a growing middle class, unless you have sufficient savvy to know how to use it to the betterment of society, for your own children and other future generations. Alas, the Philippines tends to measure everything in terms of money; with one third of the working population earning its living of necessity overseas and more than 28 percent of the population below the grinding poverty line of $1.25 a day, do we just categorize everybody outside these two groups as middle class? I don’t think so. There have been reports of newly enriched Chinese tourists letting children defecate on the floor of airports in Taiwan, within a few steps of a public toilet—is this middle class behavior? They obviously have the money to travel abroad, but lack the ability to behave in a civilized manner."




http://manilatimes.net/the-philippines-middle-class/9101/

The other thing that puzzles me is, given that cars are not cheap out there, especially 2nd hand ones, how come there are so many of them out there clogging up the roads? There seems to be plenty who can afford them.