In the darkest moments of the killer storm that ripped across this coastal city on Friday, residents huddled beneath a statue of Jesus' crucifixion on the second floor of the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center, praying for survival.

The hospital chapel, normally used for Mass in this heavily Catholic country, was one of the last places patients and staff sought refuge during supertyphoon Haiyan. Now, it is assuming a new role: maternity ward, as hospital staff grapple with failing electricity, depleted supplies and lack of space for patients.

Wooden pews are full of shrieking babies and nursing mothers. Both ends of the room are lined with intravenous drips. Before the altar sits a row of oxygen tanks and bassinets in which 16 babies, many premature, are sleeping or drowsily waving their arms.

'We have no other place that's available at the moment, and of course it's a place where people can find comfort,' said Faith Alianze, a 31-year-old doctor who has returned to her post -- one of around 70 staff out of some 300 who have managed to do so.

The battered medical center, in a low-slung green building with floors still sluiced with mud, is the only functioning hospital in this city of more than 200,000 people, among the worst-hit by the storm. The official death toll from the disaster reached 1,798 on Tuesday, although authorities say they believe the number will rise significantly.

The Tacloban hospital was crowded with patients on Tuesday and in dire need of supplies and manpower. With electricity knocked out across the city, it was running on a single generator brought in after the typhoon from Samar province, three hours away.

The hospital's own two power generators were downstairs when the waters came, and have been clogged with mud and rendered unusable.

Alberto De Leon, who has headed the hospital for seven years, said the medical center has sanitary materials to perform only three more operations. With the lack of power, tools such as the hospital's anesthesia machine aren't functioning. Nurses said antibiotics for new mothers were running out.

Staff have encouraged new mothers to go to the chapel on the second floor because it wasn't damaged, though some other parts of the hospital are also being used. Religious pictures lined the walls and a statue of Jesus hanging from a cross was suspended over an altar.

The lack of proper supplies has taken its toll. Seated before the altar and clad in a teal dress, with her stomach still rounded from her recent pregnancy, Gelly Abucejo sat with a white plastic-wrapped bundle on the pew beside her.

'My first child,' said Ms. Abucejo, 20, gesturing limply with her chin to the slim package she said contained the baby.

On Sunday, Ms. Abucejo gave birth -- one of more than 70 the hospital has seen since the typhoon hit. On Tuesday at 1:30 p.m., though, her daughter died from severe perinatal asphyxia. Nurses said she needed a suction device to keep her breathing, but the lack of electricity made that impossible.

In a country well-accustomed to massive storms -- more than a dozen typhoons hit the Philippines each year -- staff are still struggling to come to grips with the power of the latest storm.

'We were complacent,' said Mr. De Leon, the hospital chief. 'We heard on the news the waves could rise as high as nine meters, but I thought it could not happen, we did not think the typhoon would be that big.'

Mr. De Leon was at home when the waves began to rise just before dawn on Friday, lying in bed in his one-story bungalowadjacent to the hospital building.