Hospital can’t find baby it lost in 2008

Sibusiso Mndaweni and Veliswa Sondamase from Hebron whose newborn baby went missing at George Mukhari Hospital seven years ago. Photo: Oupa Mokoena

Sibusiso Mndaweni and Veliswa Sondamase from Hebron whose newborn baby went missing at George Mukhari Hospital seven years ago. Photo: Oupa Mokoena

Published Nov 24, 2015

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Pretoria - Almost seven years ago, Veliswa Sondamase and Sibusiso Mndaweni welcomed their new baby boy into the world - but to date they are yet to see him.

The staff at Dr George Mukhari Hospital in Ga-Rankuwa initially told them the baby was too sick to be seen. But years of anguish followed as the parents searched for him.

The baby is now at an age where his curiosity would be at its peak. However, his parents have never had to answer his endless questions or teach him right from wrong.

The Hebron family, north-west of the city, wants to see the baby they had not even named when he disappeared soon after birth.

They want him to run around and knock things over, and fight with his siblings. “We never had that chance; we sit here and wonder about his well-being and the home he is growing up in, and this causes us untold stress,” Mndawe said on Monday.

It appears Gauteng Health Department officials do not know his whereabouts either, as they failed to respond to Pretoria News questions over the missing baby.

The last time the parents saw the baby was just after he was born in 2008. They lost track of him between his mother’s illness and the medical team’s insistence that he was too sick to be seen.

Sondamase said she gave birth to the baby at Dr George Mukhari Hospital on December 29, 2008, two days after being rushed from a local clinic for complications during her pregnancy.

Her husband Mndaweni says: “I left her there and rushed back when they called to say she had had the baby - only to find her in a semi-coma. I was refused access to the baby because hospital staff said he was too sick.’

In the months that followed, the mother continued to drift between consciousness and a state of confusion and occasional mental disturbance. “My requests to see the baby always failed,” the father said. He was always told to wait for one doctor or the other to get an explanation on the child’s condition.

When Sondamase’s condition did not improve her family took her back home to the Eastern Cape. They had a transfer letter from George Mukhari explaining how her condition had deteriorated soon after she gave birth. Doctors in the Eastern Cape treated her for another four months before she was fit to leave hospital.

It was another four months before she was well enough to come back to Pretoria, and when she had settled back in, the couple went back to the hospital.

“We asked for our son; we wanted to be with him when he celebrated his first birthday,” he said.

What followed were years of consulting with different officials at the hospital, who at some point admitted to having records of the birth of the baby, but then accusing the parents of taking him away.

At other times, the hospital’s quality assurance officials asked if they knew a woman called Maria Mnisi, but provided no clue on the connection she had with their baby. By 2011, the couple had exhausted all avenues within the hospital and were getting discouraged by lack of answers. They decided to give up.

But the baby’s disappearance haunted them. They spent sleepless nights wondering if he was being taken care of, eating well and kept warm at night. They searched again just before his 4th birthday, approaching the hospital again and demanding answers.

“They called us into a couple of meetings in the hospital boardroom, introduced us to senior officials and then discussed the missing baby,” the father said. After such meetings, the parents were always left more confused than before.

Earlier this year the hospital asked Mndaweni and Sondamela what they would like to be given as compensation. “I told them I would appreciate cash, but still wanted back my baby. It would have been for the hardship, the pain and suffering that we have gone through. But they delivered neither,” he said.

Tthe parents have other children, but continue to pine for the child whose childhood they missed out on. The anguish of knowing that he was out there being raised by other people fills the mother with so much heartbreak that it induces anxiety attacks, she said.

@ntsandvose

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Pretoria News

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