Cops arrest woman, take her back to hospital in handcuffs
A MOTHER who abandoned her critically ill newborn baby at Dora Nginza Hospital was brought back to the hospital yesterday in handcuffs.
Sisanda Deliwe, 33, of Kwazakhele left her baby, whom she has not yet named, at the hospital when he was just one day old.
She said yesterday she had given birth to the little boy on Saturday, four weeks early.
“They took him away from me after I had him. I went to see him on Sunday,” Deliwe said.
Later on Sunday, she left the hospital without being discharged and not saying a word to anyone.
“I didn’t feel ready to be a mom,” she said.
Social worker Pamela Rubushe said Deliwe had two other children who had been placed in the care of their grandmother in Peddie. Deliwe did not dispute this. She admitted that she had left her sick baby at the hospital and had gone to see her boyfriend.
She and the boyfriend are still discussing whether or not he is the father of the child as she also has another boyfriend, who claims the child is not his.
The baby, who is on a ventilator, has nothing when it comes to material goods – no clothes, no nappies and no toiletries.
In the busy neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) unit yesterday, mothers fussed over their babies as Deliwe, forced to be there as a result of police action, sat watching from a bench nearby.
“Nobody told me that he needed a name,” Deliwe said.
“I will probably only stay until he is better.”
Rubushe said the little boy had not been breathing on his own when he was born.
He was rushed to the NICU and placed on a ventilator.
Rubushe was forced to track Deliwe down on Facebook and give her photograph to the police so they could find her.
“I opened a charge of child abandonment against her,” a furious Rubushe said.
“I am very proud of the two police constables who took this picture and tracked her down to a shack in Kwazakhele.”
She said that when the police found Deliwe she had been naked and hiding in a cupboard.
She was brought back to the hospital in handcuffs.
Rubushe said she would now try to find the baby’s grandmother so that he could be sent to her, where she hoped he would be better off.
Police spokesman Captain Andre Beetge confirmed yesterday that a docket of child abandonment had been opened against the mother.
He said the matter had been handed over to the police’s family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit for further investigation.
-Estelle Ellis
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