or Perhaps in Ukraine

Bosnia became the official birthplace of the world's six billionth baby. 29-year-old Fatima Nevic, who gave birth to her 3.55-kg firstborn at a Sarajevo maternity hospital at 12:02 last Tuesday, is extremely happy. The UN had kept the parents' names secret until the baby was visited at noon by the Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Thus according to UN information, the Earth's population has increased twofold in just the last thirty years alone. Only yesterday about 370,000 babies saw daylight, but most of them are doomed to death from starvation and diseases because most of them were born in Third World countries.

Why was precisely Sarajevo chosen as birthplace of our world's six billionth inhabitant? The UN press secretary Douglas Kauffman explains it by the fact that Kofi Annan was precisely there at the time: “If the Secretary General had been in Thailand at the time, the sixth billionth baby would have come from there.” Information aid at the UN office in Ukraine Snizhana Kolomiyets told The Day , “The experts, who had forecast the birth of the six billionth human being on that precise day proposed commemorating the day of October 12. This means that, in spite of so much publicity on the Bosnian baby, other children born on October 12 can also be given the same honors. The UN Commission on Population suggested that all maternity homes, where babies were born on October 12, be congratulated.”

This is why no one knows for sure where exactly the six billionth dweller of our planet was born. Perhaps in Ukraine?

Yesterday in Kyiv's maternity hospital No. 2, an exhausted but happy Lesia Rusyna, one of the four mothers who may have given birth to the real six billionth earthling, told The Day that in spite of all problems, she and her husband Yuri had been looking forward to their first child. They decided to give the name of Nastia to their daughter, one of those tiny and so very defenseless lives that opened the count of our seventh billion.

“Six billion?” Halyna Nosar, in charge of the physiology department at Kyiv's maternity hospital No. 2, repeated our correspondent's question with certain sadness. “It seems to me five billion people were recorded very recently (in 1987 — Ed. ). But I don't think Ukraine runs any risk of overpopulation. 42,000 babies a year used to be born in Kyiv formerly, and only 28,000 now. Moreover, as my colleagues say, there is nobody to bear children in the countryside, for young people move over to the cities. There were 2009 child deliveries in nine months at our maternity hospital (incidentally, many tried to get into precisely our hospital, for there are individual wards here). Budget subsidies are limited UAH 3.25 a day, so we ask the expectant mothers to bring some medicines and bandages with them. Only 25% of the deliveries are without complications. Poor nourishment, ecological, and social troubles tell on the health of mothers and their posterity. What is in store for the Ukrainian youngsters who have opened our seventh billion? If a President comes who will be able to suppress the Mafia, return money to this country, and enable our industrious people to improve their lives, the joy of childbearing will go hand in hand with the joy of living in our country,” Ms. Nosar said.