Johannesburg - Lebohang Manyaka gave birth to a baby boy at Germiston’s Bertha Gxowa Hospital, but he vanished soon after birth.
Weeks later, she was called to identify a dead baby - but she is unsure whether this is her child or what happened to him.
Manyaka gave birth via caesarean section at the hospital on January 31.
The next morning, when she asked to see her child, she says a doctor told her the baby had been transferred to Natalspruit Hospital.
Another doctor said her child had died, but she claims that her patient file said the baby was to be discharged at 7pm on February 1.
Two weeks after giving birth, Manyaka called Health-e News, saying she had been unable to find her baby.
“The hospital does not want to tell me the truth about the whereabouts of my child,” she said. “All I want is my child. It does not matter if he is alive or dead, but we want him.”
A few days later, after Health-e News began to make enquiries, Manyaka received a call from Bertha Gxowa Hospital to come and collect her child. When she and her partner, Karabo Rachidi, arrived, a health worker asked if they were there to see the child.
Instead of being ushered into a ward, the couple were escorted to the mortuary and shown the body of a baby boy.
Manyaka said they were asked for DNA samples to confirm the child was hers.
Within hours, she was given results confirming the child’s identity, but she remains suspicious of the test results.
The family are demanding to know how this could happen and have threatened legal action against the Department of Health.
“We want to take the hospital to court,” said Rachidi.
“We want to know why they were hiding my child in the first place.”
Manyaka has vowed to seek justice for her dead child.
“We will not rest until we find the truth,” she said.
Bertha Gxowa Hospital’s quality assurance manager, Octavia Mngadi, said the matter had been escalated to the hospital’s chief executive.
Gauteng Department of Health spokesman Prince Hamnca confirmed that the department
was investigating.
“The department has instituted an investigation into the matter and sent a team from the quality assurance unit to Bertha Gxowa Hospital to investigate,” he said.
Health-e News