Young Moldovan woman who studies in U.S. launches campaign to raise money for Balti maternity

Native Moldovan Ana Romanet, a student at the American Hebrew Academy, has launched a project aimed to bring heat and hot water to the tiny maternity hospital in Balti, says an online publication based in Greensboro, North Carolina. According to the website news-record.com, Ana Romanet, 19, is trying to raise 165,000 dollars from U.S. communities and to provide these facilities to the Balti maternity. She is doing the project as part of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship, an exclusive programme that sends young Jewish students to Israel. Each fellow is required to develop a humanitarian project. Romanet, a senior at the Hebrew Academy, already has found contractors in Balti who will install the furnace and boiler at a reduced price. She hopes to raise the money by mid-April, so the hospital will have heat and hot water for next winter. Nine other Bronfman fellows from across the country dropped their projects to join hers. For 48 years, women in northern Moldova have given birth in a hospital with no heat or running hot water. Thousands of shivering mothers have babies in the dead-cold winter of the former Soviet Union. Nurses clean newborns with water heated in a dirty tub. "I have an opportunity to restore dignity, to show my friends the reality of the world that they can't see here," she said. "I feel pretty awesome." The Balti administration has promise to spend city tax money on upkeep for the hospital. According to data of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, the infantile death in Moldova was 12.4 deaths for 1,000 living newborns in 2005, compared with 12.2 in 2004, 14.4 in 2003. At the same time, reports published by UNICEF the precedent years show that the rate is about 40 deaths for 1,000 births, one of the highest rates in Europe. This rate in the U.S. is 6.5 deaths for 1,000 newborns. About 2,000 babies a year are born in the Balti maternity ward