Woman Gives Birth In Tree After Floods Force Millions From Homes In Mozambique

Jet, March 20, 2000

A Mozambican woman recently gave birth to a baby girl in a treetop where she had lived above raging water for four days due to floods which forced about 1 million people from their homes in the country.

Sophia Pedro, 26, gave birth to her daughter, Rositha, just minutes before they were rescued after a medic winched down from a helicopter to cut the newborn's umbilical cord.

Both mother and daughter were doing fine at JET press time.

The dramatic rescue came as thousands more Mozambicans remained stranded in trees, on rooftops or on shrinking spits of land, sometimes already waist-deep in the water from weeks of rain. Thousands more are feared dead in the flooding that has devastated one of the world's poorest countries.

Pedro and her newborn were among 915 people rescued from floodwaters in central Mozambique by South African military helicopters. Rositha was born as a rescue helicopter hovered overhead and began hoisting the eight occupants of the tree to safety.

Helicopter pilot Chris Berlyn said crew member Stewart Back had been lowered into the tree and discovered that Pedro was about to give birth. He said the child was born two minutes later.

Berlyn raced back to a base camp to pick up Godfrey Nongovela, a medic. Nongovela and other members of the crew managed to get the woman and child safely aboard the helicopter.

An exhausted Pedro said from her hospital bed that she was happy to have been rescued along with three other members of her family. But, she said her grandmother died in the floods.

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world and the floods have devastated the most fertile and densely populated regions of the country.