This World: World’s Busiest Maternity Ward

This second of three ‘This World’ films presented by Anita Rani and exploring global population trends, sees her visiting Manila. At the Jose Fabella hospital – which serves the city’s vast slum area Tondo – the maternity ward vaguely resembles a particularly hectic game of sardines.

The head nurse estimates she’s delivered 200,000 babies during her career. And with the city’s population projected to grow by 50 percent over the next 40 years, she’s only going to get busier. All the same, Rani, who’s clearly no adherent to the apocalyptic Stephen Emmott school of population analysis, is determined to come back with some good news. And she finds it in the shape of Junalyn, a slum dweller who’s after a job at Citibank.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that Rani isn’t pushing quite hard enough at either the brutal inequalities of Philippine life or the environmental implications of the country’s ongoing sprawl. But it’s certainly an interesting and very human insight into the exigencies of the developing world.