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Nomusa Nkomo (21) lost her baby last weekend at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, a result of which she says was medical negligence.
Nkomo, who stays in Soweto and is serving a learnership with a travel company, said that during the early hours of Sunday morning (August 20), she went into premature labour – she was only 24-weeks into her pregnancy. Her father had called for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
Upon arrival, the paramedics had taken Nkomo to the gynaecology ward, where two nurses who were on duty allegedly refused to render any medical attention to Nkomo. “They just sat there with books and said that they were off duty. They didn’t want to help me,” Nkomo said.
The paramedic assisting Nkomo then had to rush her to the maternity ward in a wheelchair because, Nkomo alleged, the nurses refused to even provide a stretcher.
“Just as we entered the labour ward, I could feel the head of my baby coming out and I told the paramedic that the baby was already coming. Then the baby came out but he slipped from my hands and fell onto the floor.”
Nkomo had given birth to a baby boy.
The nurses in the maternity ward were not immediately helpful either, as the paramedic had to pick the baby up from the floor.
“They then took me to a bed where I delivered the placenta and they cut the umbilical cord. They took the baby away and came back and told me that he had died,” she said.
Her aunt, Nonkuleko Tshabalala, was with her at the time.
“I saw the paramedic ask the nurses for a stretcher twice, and they refused to give us one. That’s why we had to just rush Musa to the next ward and that’s when the baby came. All they did was cover the baby with a white cloth, they didn’t even check the baby to see if he was alive,” Tshabalala said.
Nkomo was discharged the next afternoon from the hospital and on Wednesday the baby was buried at the Slovoville cemetery.
Whilst an autopsy was performed, Nkomo was told that her baby died of “natural causes”.
“When I went to go identify his body I saw he had a bruise on the side of his forehead and it had turned green, even my dad saw it when the coffin was opened during the service on Wednesday,” Nkomo said.
Nkomo and her family filed an official report at the hospital this week.
“I am haunted by so many thoughts and bad memories. I want the nurses who refused to help me to lose their jobs. If it can happen to me then it can happen to someone else and I should not have lost my baby,” Nkomo told City Press.
“I feel they are being ignorant and trying to protect the nurses. Even if my child had passed away anyway due to him being premature, at least I would have been on a bed instead of seeing him fall to the floor,” she said.
Nkomo’s father, Jabu Mthembu, said that it hurts to see his daughter going through such pain.
“As a father you never want to see this happening. There have been so many incidents of young girls who have lost their baby at Bara, they don’t care for young girls who are pregnant it seems,” he said.
Nkomo and her family kept two names for her son, Buhlebenzelo Judah, meaning “the beauty of being born”.
Earlier this month Gauteng Health MEC Dr Gwen Ramakgopa confirmed that during the 2014-2016 period, 1338 infants had died at birth at the same hospital.
Going forward, spokesperson for the Gauteng Health MEC Prince Hamnca, said that the incident would be investigated.
“The matter will be handed over to the quality assurance team, and it will be up to them to give the recommendations,” Hamnca said.
The quality assurance team is set up by the department to monitor the quality of patient care.
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