Pregnant women soft target for traffickers

Every day, dug-out canoes smuggle items across the Maroni river, the muddy cataract between French Guiana from Suriname. There is cocaine, mercury for illegal gold-mining and "bush meat" from endangered animals.

One form of contraband frightens Dr Gabriel Carles more than any other: heavily pregnant women. Dr Carles, a French physician, has created a world class maternity clinic in the river town of Saint-Laurent du Maroni on the western border of French Guiana.

His clinic serves a vast territory, peopled by Creoles and the descendants of escaped African slaves, known as Bushi-Nenge.

More recently, his clinic has been overwhelmed by strangers in the last stages of pregnancy, sent by people-smugglers from as far away as Haiti.

The crisis is rooted in history, and the decision to convert French colonies into "overseas departments" – considered provinces of France herself.

Legally, Saint-Laurent – just minutes by dug-out from Suriname – lies in France. French Guiana is also part of the EU, collecting a total of £725 million in EU subsidies for the years 2000 to 2006 – or pounds 3,625 for each of its 200,000 residents.

Babies born in Dr Carles's clinic qualify for French citizenship once they turn 18. More immediately, they can attend school, triggering a flood of French welfare payments.

Welfare levels are imported directly from France. The benefits can support an entire family, especially if that family lives in Surinam, smuggling their children across the Maroni each day for school.

Saint-Laurent has long seen a trickle of mothers from Surinam, an ex-Dutch colony reduced to misery by civil war. Now word of Saint-Laurent's maternity clinic has spread further afield.

Five years ago, the clinic handled 1,200 births. "Last year, 1,780 women gave birth in Saint-Laurent. That's what you would expect in a French city of 150,000 people," Dr Carles said.

Officially, Saint-Laurent has 20,000 inhabitants, though the true figure is well over 30,000. Dr Carles guesses between 30 and 40 per cent of his patients are from abroad.

"Before, it was cousins and relatives from the other side of the river, people wanting medical care. In the last five years it has become people trafficking."

Officials in the provincial capital, Cayenne, boast of a plan to renovate an old clinic in Albina, the Surinamese port opposite, to ease the pressure on Saint-Laurent.

"But we actually started working with doctors in Albina five years ago," Dr Carles retorted. But Surinamese mothers wanted French passports, not French doctors, so no women came.

© The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2004