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The City with Too Many People - Four To A Hospital Bed, & Living With The Dead...

Manila is one of the world's most overpopulated cities.
The Philippine capital is stretched to breaking point, with mothers four to a bed in maternity wards, primary schools with a thousand children in each year, and graveyards with no more room to bury the dead.
As the world faces an overpopulation crisis, Manila provides a vision of what might become ordinary in the not too distant future.
The biggest maternity hospital in the city operates on an industrial scale, with four mothers and their babies sharing each bed. The ward is at double capacity when the team arrive, and it's so overcrowded that the nurses have to patrol it to make sure no one is sleeping on their babies and suffocating them.
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Religion.
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Women often have eight children or more there, and some of the mothers say it's hard to make ends meet with such large families. But the Filipino government doesn't promote contraception as it fears losing the Catholic vote.
In Baseco, a shanty town where 90,000 people share just half a square kilometre. A third of Manila's 20 million residents live in squatter settlements like this. New homes are being built every day; wherever there's space another family will fill it. There is no sanitation and the children grow up surrounded by rubbish.
Like everything else in Manila, the water supply can't meet the demand of the number of people who want to use it, and contagious diseases spread fast. Children have persistent rashes but can't afford to take them to a doctor for treatment.
One resident, Ludivina, says she has ten children and no idea where they will now live. Evictions like this happen all the time in Manila but they don't solve the city's squatter problem: they simply move it from one location to another.
Most Filipinos choose to be buried rather than cremated, which creates its own problems for the city. There are approx. 80 funerals take place every day. Most people can't afford their own tombs, so they rent them. And if their families fail to keep up the rent payments after they're buried, their bodies are exhumed and another coffin is placed in their grave. There are hundreds of families living in makeshift homes among the tombs, jostling for space with the dead.
Manila's problems may appear extraordinary. But as global population grows, the city provides a vision of what might become ordinary around the world as the rest of the planet runs out of space.
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Added: Oct-18-2010 
By: The_Dogs_Bollox
In:
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Tags: Philippines, Manila, Living In Tombs, Overcrowded, Population Explosion, Religion, Catholicism, Graveyard, Cemetry, Infomation
Marked as: approved, featured
Views: 37599 | Comments: 136 | Votes: 14 | Favorites: 19 | Shared: 5 | Updates: 0 | Times used in channels: 1
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