UNICEF: After tsunami, new hospitals in Sri Lanka

POTTUVIL, Sri Lanka, 26 December 2008 For the first time since the waves of the tsunami destroyed her home and her familys livelihood, T. Lafara is celebrating a new addition to her family. She cradles a newborn girl in her arms, as she drifts back and forth in the yard outside her home.

This is her third child one shes been waiting years to have, until her family could sort out its living arrangements in the wake of the 2004 disaster. Now Ms. Lafara has a new house, and the baby arrived in August, soon after the opening of a new district hospital with a full-service maternity ward.

The old clinic in this area did not have much space, and there were only two or three doctors when my first child was born, said Ms. Lafara. The new hospital is spacious with more doctors. We have lavatories and its clean there.

The new UNICEF-built hospital in the eastern Sri Lankan town of Pottuvil serves a community of 50,000 families. Most of them were displaced by the tsunami. Before the disaster, the nearest maternity hospital was more than 45 km away, in an area under threat by Sri Lankas civil war.

To read the full story, visit: http://www.unicef.org/emerg/disasterinasia/index_46960.html

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• Tsumani
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• Lanka
• Pottuvil
• children
• health
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