Welcome to the World

WOMAN MOANS

Every second of every day, somewhere in the world a woman is

giving birth, and every year

130 million babies are born.

Imagine living without access to water or electricity,

going to bed hungry every night, never going to school.

Hundreds of millions of people live like that. It's called poverty.

Poverty blights people's lives and it can do so right from the outset.

Poor countries have high infant mortality rates.

The infant mortality rate is the number of children in every 1,000

who die before their first birthday.

In Britain,

fewer than five babies in every 1,000

die before their first birthday.

But in poor countries the figure is much higher.

Of the 20 worst countries to be born,

19 of them are in Africa.

A child in Africa is much more likely to die as an infant

than a child in Europe, more likely to suffer from malnutrition,

less likely to go to school, more likely to be a child worker,

less likely to have access to clean water,

much more likely to be a loser in the birthright lottery.

Where there is high infant mortality, we also find high

rates of maternal mortality, in other words,

more women die in childbirth in poor countries than in rich ones.

In an ideal world, every woman would give birth safely

and be attended by trained medical staff.

THEY CONFER

But every day 1,000 women die either pregnant or in childbirth.

And every year four million babies die before they are 28 days old.

99% of these infant deaths are in developing countries,

especially in Africa and Asia.

And it's the same story with maternal deaths, most of them

happen in Africa and Asia as well.

I have now been working 25 years in Africa.

I have seen this immense suffering of women.

And nobody seems to be doing much about it,

it's very difficult to do, because you need trained obstetricians

to do this kind of work, it's very strenuous,

it costs a lot of money and you need some dedication.

We also find poverty in unexpected places.

The United States might be the richest country in the world,

but it has plenty of people living in poverty and one

of the worse infant mortality rates in the developed world.

You can be poor wherever you live.

There is no good reason for poverty to exist.

There is enough money in the world

and enough resources for everyone to have enough.

But poverty goes hand-in-hand with inequality, and all over the world

the gap between rich and poor is getting wider.

I'm not so sure that most Americans are aware of the extent

of poverty in America.

I think that we tend to put our blinders on and I think that

what we also do is assume that people are in the situation they

are in because they want to be,

when poverty is an accident of birth.

A child does not get to choose which family he or she is born into.

When you're born into a family that is poor,

the opportunities that you have are far fewer than those

who are born into a family that has means.

One billion people live on less than a dollar a day.

Does the world need some people to be so poor,

so that others can be rich?

Every year, 130 million children are born.

That's 130 million new stories.

Welcome to the world.

Cambodia, in southeast Asia, has a population of 16 million,

one third of whom live below the poverty level.

Almost half of the children in Cambodia are malnourished.

And although living conditions have improved enormously in this country

in the last 30 years, it still has a great deal of poverty.

This is Pisey.

He's 12 years old,

although he looks smaller because he's malnourished.

In other words, he doesn't get enough to eat.

Although Neang doesn't get state benefits to live on,

she is entitled to free health care in the public hospital

where she has come to give birth.

While his mum is in hospital, Pisey has to travel across the city

and collect the antiretroviral drugs she needs for her HIV.

MONITOR BLEEPS

This is Pisey's new sister, Ly Ly.

With the birth of baby Ly Ly, there is another mouth for Pisey to feed,

so his chances of going to school are becoming more remote.

If he's not working, the family has no income at all.

Ly Ly faces an uncertain future,

like all children brought up in a slum.

She's more likely to become malnourished than go to high school.

Most people in Cambodia have no access to sanitation,

which means they are more likely to become ill.

Ly Ly died just two months after coming home.

We don't know what she died of.

Neang now works on a construction site and earns three dollars a day.

With his mother now earning money, Pisey can go to school.

Perhaps education is the best way for people in poverty

to improve their lives.

The United States is the richest country in the world,

but it also has high levels of inequality and poverty.

Starr and her family

are homeless in San Francisco.

She and her partner, Fernando, lost their jobs in the recession.

'It's the kind of thing that can happen, I guess, to anybody.

'You know? Didn't expect it, wouldn't have expected it a year ago,

'never would have dreamed this was going to happen.'

We were living in a nice house, we had everything we needed, we

weren't hurting, our cupboards were full, and so, kind of, here we are.

Just lost everything.

The economy has just completely collapsed.

I couldn't pay my rent, so I bought a motor home for my family,

with the last little bit of money we had.

I thought that was the right thing to do.

Apparently, it's illegal, you know, to live in the RV, so...

-FERNANDO:

-Gaian, stop! You're hurting your brother.

Don't have a breakdown. Let's chill.

It's nobody's fault. I don't even think it's my fault.

This is life.

I've never lived at the top end of, you know, the class scale,

or anything like that. I come from poor white trash, you know,

so I, hell... even with our situation today,

I'm probably living better than half of my family.

I'm not trying to get pity from anybody.

I am trying to get a little bit of a hand up.

Not a hand-out.

I just want a little bit of support while I pull myself together.

In San Francisco,

there is a charity that works with pregnant homeless women.

PEOPLE CHATTER

HPP, or the Homeless Prenatal Program,

is a family research centre.

It initially was a program that focused only on women who

were homeless and pregnant,

taking advantage of that period of pregnancy to help a woman

change her life, or do things that would be healthier.

You like that one? You pick whatever you want.

-I prefer these.

-OK, whatever you like.

Congratulations. You're having a boy?

I've been doing this for 22 years now.

I found the Third World right here in America.

I couldn't believe that women were homeless and pregnant,

and bringing children into the world without a home for them to go to.

In the first year, we worked with 72 women who were homeless

and pregnant living in the shelter, and 22 years later,

this last year, we delivered 517 babies to women who were...

not everybody is homeless, but everybody is at risk for homelessness.

The common denominator is poverty.

Well, this is the Hamilton family residence.

And I guess this is a room for a family of four, slash five,

if it's a baby, so we get the single bunks, which, you know,

so there is four beds, and one dresser

and that's the extent of the furniture.

I'm grateful for it, even if it is a little reminiscent of a jail cell!

You know?

1.6 million children are homeless in the USA

and poverty and inequality are growing problems

right across America.

It's not the extreme kind of poverty

faced by people in Sub-Saharan Africa,

but it does mean they have fewer chances in life.

Starr is having her baby in San Francisco General Hospital.

The staff here are dedicated to providing care

to people with low incomes.

Starr and her family are on welfare,

which means they get 480 a month to live on -

that's about £300,

plus a similar amount in food stamps.

STARR MOANS

So, I'm just frustrated and emotional...

and upset.

I'm not looking forward to the rest of this birth at this point...

STARR MOANS

-MEDICAL STAFF:

-Good, good push...

-NURSE:

-Strong, steady, steady push...

Strong, good, steady, big push...

all the way back.

Beautiful. Beautiful, Starr.

-My baby! NURSE:

-Take your baby.

MEDICAL STAFF CONFER

BABY CRIES

-NURSE:

-Happy birthday!

Congratulations, Dad.

BABY CRIES

STARR: Yeah, I know! Go ahead and get mad!

-NURSE:

-Oh, my goodness.

STARR: She's so tiny.

-You got the baby?

-I have the baby.

-We get to go home, are we ready?

-All righty!

-STAFF:

-Bye. Have a good one!

Have a very happy Monday.

-You, too. Good luck with your beautiful baby.

-Thank you.

Baby Luma has an uncertain future.

Not only has she been born homeless and below the poverty line,

she's also been born into one of the most unequal societies in the world.

Many people would argue

that ending inequality

is the best way to end poverty.

'We're not out of options in life.'

It gets really frustrating some days,

and some days, you know, it's hard to deal with.

But, you know, we're not out of options, we got, you know...

..some things going on. We'll figure it out.

Sierra Leone, in west Africa,

is a country rich in natural resources.

It is one of the biggest producers of diamonds in the world

and it has large deposits of iron ore and other minerals.

The tropical climate makes it fertile and abundant with crops.

It has some of the best beaches in the whole of Africa.

Sounds perfect...

yet the people of Sierra Leone are some of the poorest in the world.

In small villages like Bengie, they have no running water,

no electricity and not much in the way of food or access to

health services and education.

This is Hawa. She's pregnant and expecting her fifth child.

A lack of birth control is a big problem for many African countries.

In Sierra Leone,

only 17% of women use contraception.

This compares to 88% of women in Norway.

Isatu is heavily pregnant and in need of urgent medical attention.

Where there is poverty,

you will find high infant and maternal mortality.

Sierra Leone is one of the worst countries in the world to be born,

in terms of infant mortality.

One in every seven children born here

will die before their first birthday.

The women in this region are fortunate to have this hospital.

It's funded and run by Medecins Sans Frontieres, a charity dedicated

to providing medical care for some of the poorest people in the world.

This hospital only deals with very critical cases.

Now we have five of our own clinics and another 25 government clinics,

our Ministry of Health clinics, which are referring patients to us.

We only take, in this hospital, we only take patients who have

complications, we do not do spontaneous deliveries.

So we have a high Caesarean-section rate.

So why do women here lose

so many babies and why do so many children die young?

Is it because African mothers and children

are more unhealthy than, say, Europeans?

I don't think that women have necessarily more difficult

births than other places,

I think the problem is their lack of access to medical care.

There are very few gynaecologists in the country,

there are very few other doctors that can provide obstetric care,

there are very few midwives in the country.

MEDICAL STAFF CONFER

Most births in Sierra Leone are supervised in villages

by traditional birth attendants, women with no medical training.

They can deal with straightforward births,

but don't know how to deal with emergencies.

Hawa is being looked after by a traditional birth attendant.

The government are trying to get

women to go to clinics and have their babies in a safe environment.

Hawa is very unusual in that all four of her children have survived.

The usual experience for most women in Sierra Leone is very different.

'If I get a mother in that's had six pregnancies

'and has five live children, that's something that we comment on.

'That's unusual that she would have all her children living.'

Ahh!

Most mothers lose at least one child in childbirth

or before the age of five.

It's rare to see a woman who has all her children living.

We'll try something else. Give me a knife.

I am sorry to do this, mother.

Things are improving in Sierra Leone.

The government recently made health care free for pregnant women

and under-fives.

Relatively small amounts of money mean that women can give birth

safely and children can have better chances in life.

THEY SING

Hawa wants an even larger family,

but her reason for that is a desperate one.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd