VIDEO: Woman allegedly chased away from Alex Clinic and gives birth in the street

A pregnant woman at an advanced stage of labour was allegedly chased away from Alex Clinic and gave birth in the street with the help of a vendor.

A concerned resident, Gabisile Sibeko of Extension 8, said she stumbled on the incident on her way home from work at 4.30pm on 10 March.

“I initially saw a crowd of people milling around in the street and first suspected that there had been a serious accident,” she said.

She said she was walking with a colleague and moved closer to see what was happening. “We found an elderly street vendor [performing] the midwifery role, and me and my colleague also joined in and assisted. We then learnt that the young woman had been chased away from Alex Clinic by nurses who said they could not help her as she had registered at Edenvale General Hospital. This was despite her protest that it was an emergency and she would not make it to the hospital,” said Sibeko.

Watch a video from the scene below:

Sibeko said as they assisted the 37-year-old to give birth, they kept calling for an ambulance. After she had given birth, the young woman passed out. Both mother and child, a baby girl, were taken by ambulance and returned to Alex Clinic, Sibeko said.

This all happened at about 4.45pm on 1st Street, Wynberg, just outside the clinic premises and suspicions were that she must have been chased away just minutes before she knelt down in the street and started giving birth.

The street vendor rushed to her aid, covered part of her body and assisted her to give birth. She is an elderly rural woman from KwaZulu-Natal who is quite familiar with midwifery practises, Sibeko said.

“I am so disappointed at the behaviour of the concerned nurses who chased the woman away. How do you do that? If she was registered in a hospital in her country or in Durban, for that matter, would they have told her to fly back home or to Durban?” she asked.

“Why don’t blacks have respect for fellow blacks. There was no need at all for the clinic staff to chase her away. If she gave birth minutes after being chased away, it goes without saying that a trained nurse should have been able to pick it up that she was at an advanced stage and that it constituted an emergency,” Sibeko added.

Meanwhile, Alex News tracked down the mother and baby, who were discharged from the clinic this morning (11 March) and both of them were fine. Aseuc Aleja, the mother of Nonhlanhla Assne Afiurtu, said she was treated well after her return to the clinic with her daughter.

“The nurses never apologised for earlier chasing me away but they spoke at length with the woman who brought me in after giving birth but I never got to hear what they were talking about. Me and baby Nonhlanhla are fine,” she added.

Asked why she gave her the name Nonhlanhla, she said her mother back home in Malawi had named her, which is Zulu for the ‘lucky one’.

“She is lucky to be alive as I delivered her in the street with the help of strangers. I am grateful to them for their act of humanity,” Aleja said.

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