A resident of Madombidzha village, Tshilidzi Magadani (29), gave birth while waiting on a sofa at the Louis Trichardt Memorial Hospital. She now blames the hospital for her newborn baby's death.

The incident happened on 20 September at around 03:00. Magadani said that she was admitted to the hospital three days earlier. “On the third day, I was sitting on a sofa when I started experiencing labour pains and I started screaming for the nurses to come and attend to me,” she explained. She added that the four nurses on duty were sitting behind the counter at the ward's reception. One of the nurses came and listened to her as she informed her (the nurse) that the baby was on its way.

“She told me that I knew nothing about the right time for the baby to come, and then she walked away,” Magadani said in a pained voice. “As I winced and struggled by myself on the sofa, the baby just rocketed out of me and hit the floor hard in front of my eyes. All the nurses rose at once and rushed towards me.”

Nurses then picked the baby up and went away, said Magadani. She was then attended to. “The next thing, they informed me that my baby was dead and that I should just accept it,” she told Limpopo Mirror. “I cried and wept day and night for the next three days, which I was made to spend in the hospital.”

When she entered the maternity ward, Magadani's prospects were that she would walk out of the hospital gates, cuddling a beautiful, healthy baby in her arms, but that was not going to be. She staggered out of the LTT Memorial Hospital, hounded by the thought that she had lost her baby. “The pain is still heavy on me even today, and it's part of the reason why I have decided to share my plight with everyone,” she said.

Magadani's spouse, Mr Nature Biller (29), went to request the baby's death certificate and it was issued to him on 27 September. “My friend, what happened to my wife is very traumatising,” said Biller. “Today I live and sleep in the same house with a woman who just weeps unexpectedly, and when I ask her what the problem is, she refers to the senseless incident that happened in the hospital. This thing is very hard on me.”

On the death certificate which Limpopo Mirror viewed, ''natural causes'' is cited as the cause of the baby's death.

The spokesperson for the Department of Health, Adele van der Linde, said that the department would investigate the case to find out what exactly had happened on that day. “In the meantime, we will arrange for the lady (Ms Magadani) to go for counselling,” said Van der Linde.