Newborn finally registered

File photo

File photo

Published Dec 19, 2012

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Mpumalanga - Following several critical media reports, the home affairs department has finally registered the birth of a premature baby born only seven months after his brother.

The parents of three-month-old Abraham Jacobus (Jaco) Smith had battled for months to get the department to issue a birth certificate for their child, Beeld reported on Wednesday.

Parents Braam Smith, 43, and his wife, Suzette, from Komatipoort in Mpumalanga, were told by a government official at the mobile home affairs office at the hospital that they could not register their son. The system did not make provision for more than one baby per year to be registered to the same set of parents.

A day after media reports on the matter appeared last week, a home affairs official contacted Braam Smith and told him he could collect his child's birth certificate.

Smith said it was a huge relief to have completed his son's registration in time to meet the 90-day deadline for submission of the birth certificate to his medical aid, failing which he would have had to cover the R1 million neonatal ICU bill himself. - Sapa

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