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  • now it's nine months since the Philippines started one of the longest and hardest co vid 19 lockdowns in the world.

  • Restrictions have since eased, but the country's Commission on Population is warning that one unintended consequence will be a baby boom.

  • Our correspondent in Malina, Howard Johnson, explains I Century 41 year old Rovelli from Persico Manila, is expecting her 10th child, conceived shortly after the city went under lock down.

  • The pregnancy was unplanned.

  • Contraception wasn't used in.

  • The father of the child has since left Rovelli e Even now that I'm pregnant, we sometimes only eat once or not at all on the day.

  • It's really hard because even though you're hungry and you want to eat, you have no money.

  • Raviolis Baby will be one of an estimated two million locked down babies delivered next year, according to a recent study by the University of the Philippines.

  • The country continues to have one of the highest fertility rates in Southeast Asia, despite a law eight years ago that provided state funding to make contraception more readily available.

  • But even with continued opposition from the Catholic Church, the policy has been partially successful in bringing down the birth rate.

  • But now experts are warning that those early gains will be all but wiped out.

  • We will lose four years that we have been working on the program.

  • We will have more unplanned pregnancies.

  • Right now.

  • It's at a rate of three out of every 10 or unplanned.

  • It could be a Sias, probably half of the pregnancies next year so far in a bed that you can see at Dr Josefa Belly, a hospital doctor Diana car he pay inspects one of the world's busiest maternity wards before the Reproductive Health Act.

  • Up to 120 babies were born here every day, earning the hospital the title.

  • The baby factory we're seeing as you said, four toe, two beds at the moment.

  • What do you foresee when the baby boom hit well during visit fines, it can even reach 567 patients in two beds put together Yes, because the maximum capacity bed capacity of this hospital is just 408.

  • Just for this year, we reached more than 600 police back in Mexico, people scatter as a police patrol enters the area.

  • They're looking for a drug dealer, one of the only ways to escape poverty, says Rovelli.

  • Number one.

  • That's my number one worry if I can still support their education.

  • Sometimes when I get angry and lose my temper, I tell them, What if I just put them up for adoption for each people so that they will be able to have proper schooling?

  • The pandemic has driven the Philippine economy into recession on opportunities for those born at the bottom are bleaker than ever.

  • How?

  • Johnson, BBC News, Manila.

now it's nine months since the Philippines started one of the longest and hardest co vid 19 lockdowns in the world.

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