"Please help me, please help me, I am having my baby." This was the plea of a desperate mother-to-be in the car park of the Netcare St Augustine's Hospital in Durban in the early hours of Friday morning. Another hospital had turned her away because its gates were closed due to public service strike action.

Netcare 911 paramedics from the on-site Netcare 911 base immediately responded to her appeal, and delivered the baby then and there in the car park. The paramedics then took mother and son into the emergency unit of the hospital.

The mom had first been taken to another hospital where she was unable to gain access due to strike action and had started to go into labour. According to Netcare St Augustine?s Hospital Manager, Augusta Dorning, a concerned passer by took pity on the woman and drove her to Netcare St Augustine?s Hospital. On arrival she was unable to make it to the elevators and the little one was delivered in the car park.

"Both the mother and baby are doing very well," added Dorning. "We gave the child vaccinations and vitamin K. It was a normal delivery with no complications. We will keep them with us for observation and then find a suitable public facility where they can be transferred to."

"Care is our core value here at Netcare and we are delighted to have been able to assist the mom and her baby," concluded Dorning. "I think it says something about our services that she chose our facility to help her and are very proud of the way Netcare 911 and hospital staff responded so quickly and treated her effectively."

In another, similar story a heavily pregnant woman was turned away from several Johannesburg hospitals before being accepted by Tembisa hospital after an ambulance driver spent hours trying to have the her accepted.

She was in a critical condition on the verge of giving birth.

She was initially turned away from Tembisa clinic, before being refused admittance to Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, Hillbrow Clinic and Alexandra Clinic.

The driver said he had to convince officials at Tembisa Hospital to accept her.

"When I got to Tembisa [Hospital] they checked the patient and she had [some complications]. They said they would accept her, but they are only taking patients from Tembisa," he said.

He added there that there was a massive backlog with emergency calls across the city as most ambulances were spending several hours trying to get patients admitted.

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