18-year-old Ryan Bacate is in a panic by the side of a road near a paddy field outside the city of Tacloban in the center of the Philippines. Analyn Pesado, also 18 and pregnant with Bacate, lies on the ground three miles from the closest clinic in the municipality of Tolosa.
After she gave birth, Bacate and Pesado were riding his motorcycle to the clinic. A man who was also on a motorcycle passed by and hurried to Tolosa to retrieve Norina Malate. She found the baby crowning when she got there. Malate urged Pesado to advance. Malate cleaned her scissors with alcohol after the baby was born, then she cut the umbilical cord. Pesado and her baby, a male, were assisted in being loaded onto a pickup vehicle that would transport them to the Tolosa clinic.
Photographer Lynsey Addario was on assignment for Save the Children, which is helping to rebuild health-care infrastructure in Haiyan-hit areas, and captured the remarkable birth. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Addario. “It was such a community effort. When you see a baby born like that, and it is fine, you’ve got to think: It’s kind of miraculous.”
