‘I had no idea I could sue the state’
A Soshanguve woman said state hospital staff told her it was her fault her baby suffered brain damage during birth.
|||Pretoria - A woman living in an informal settlement in Soshanguve says she has to live daily with the guilt that her 2-year-old daughter is so brain damaged that she is blind and can’t sit, walk or talk, allegedly due to a loss of oxygen during birth.
Debra Mathipa said staff and doctors at a state hospital told her it was her fault her baby suffered brain damage during birth.
“I always felt guilty and thought I was to blame for my child’s condition. I felt that if the medical personnel who are trained blamed me, I must have done something wrong,” she said.
Mathipa made these statements in papers before the high court in Pretoria during an application for permission to institute legal proceedings against the Gauteng MEC for Health.
She said it was only during a conversation with her aunt in May – when the older woman told her about a similar case and urged her to go and speak to lawyers – that she realised she could sue the government.
Mathipa was told that in terms of the law, she had to, within six months of giving birth, serve a notice of her intention to litigate to the health authorities.
She told the court she had not done this within the given time frame, as she, as a lay person, had no idea she could sue the state.
“I humbly ask the court to come to my, and more specifically, my child’s assistance,” she pleaded with Judge Bert Bam. He gave her the green light to proceed with her claim.
The mother said she experienced severe labour pains in March 2013 and went to her local clinic.
The staff there referred her to a state hospital, as they could not handle her case. The hospital is not named at this stage as damning allegations are made against its staff and summons has yet to be served on it.
The woman said she had to wait for about 18 hours at the hospital before a doctor examined her.
He told the nurses to prepare Mathipa for a Caesarean section.
“Nobody prepared me and a few hours later I began giving birth. I screamed for assistance but no staff came. Another patient in the same ward also shouted for assistance. By the time the nurses came the baby was already partially born.”
The mother said the nurse gave the baby a slap on the buttocks, but the child did not make a sound.
“The nurses told me there may be something wrong with the baby and if that was the case, it would be my fault. They scolded me and kept on saying that I would be to blame if my baby was not healthy. I was extremely emotional as I had no idea what I had done wrong.”
She spoke to a doctor the following day, who told her there could be complications with the brain, as the child suffered a lack of oxygen during birth.
“I was told to wait and see if the baby had suffered serious damage.”
The baby never improved, the mother said.
Pretoria News