KIEV Halya was at an advanced stage of pregnancy when she gave birth to a healthy baby girl by cesarean section at a small hospital in the Ukrainian town of Lvov near the border with Poland.
Doctors were friendly, the sheets were clean and there was even warm water on tap all day long.
"With a reassuring smile they wheeled me into the operating theater," the 37-year-old Ukrainian mother of two recalls.
Her second daughter Larissa was born by cesarian on May 9, the day when the Ukraine, Russia and other former communist Soviet republics mark the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II in 1945.
At first she tried to get admitted to the University Hospital of Lvov but the chief surgeon turned her away.
"Orthodox Easter festivities plus with victory day I guess no one wanted any hassle on a bank holiday," says Halya.
The petite woman knew she there were likely to be complications.
She already had a difficult birth 15 years ago when she had her first daughter Natalya who has been almost blind on one eye since.
Halya's wealthy husband had to buy all the medical utensils needed for the cesarean ranging from sterile plastic gloves to the anesthetics.
According to respective national Constitutions, people in Russia and the Ukraine as well as in other ex-Soviet nations enjoy free health care.
But the grim reality is far from it, with patients having to pay for nearly everything themselves and medical staff who have not received wages for months on end.
At the Lvov Hospital, an ultrasound examination costs five grivna ($1) and a disposable syringe four grivna. If the hospital midwife shows a mother how to breast feed her newly born infant she charges two grivna.
The University Hospital of Lvov closed its Maternity Ward for the Orthodox Easter holiday allegedly for hygienic reasons.
In the hospital ward, 14 patients young mothers and pregnant women waiting to give birth have to share one toilet and one shower.
Until today several women are commonly crammed into one room to give birth in a Soviet-style collective.
The walls of the hospital rooms are filthy, and there is no privacy.
Patients rely on relatives for food. The rooms are either badly aired or else the windows are broken.
Only paying patients can give birth under better conditions.
The penniless are best advised to have their children at home with the help of an experienced woman neighbor. In rural regions midwives are often given a freshly slaughtered chicken, a bag of potatoes or a dozen eggs for their services as villagers had no money to pay them.
Millions of pregnant women across Eastern Europe have abortions annually for fear of what an uncertain future may have in store for them and their offspring.
In Bulgaria, Estonia, Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine the number of abortions clearly exceeds the number of births. Only a few years ago two out of three pregnancies were ended forcibly in the Ukraine.
In Halya's hospital room a poor young peasant girl was awaiting her delivery which was expected to be complicated. "Each day the doctor would come and complain to the girl that no one was paying for her forthcoming cesarean," says Halya.
(DPA)