WATCH: Cruel blow to young mom
Parenting a permanently disabled seven-year-old child while completing matric has been gruelling for Zimasa Maqwara.
Maqwara, 22, from Xhibeni village, 20km from Ngcobo, is grateful her 71-year-old grandmother is able to help her with childcare.
She successfully sued the Eastern Cape department of health for R12-million after delays in delivering her son, Simamkele.
Today the boy suffers from dynostic cerebral palsy, infantile epilepsy and developmental delay. He cannot walk or talk.
However, his mother described him as a bright child who had potential for learning.
Realising the importance of education, Maqwara decided soon after the torrid birth of her son in the Mthatha Hospital Complex that he would one day go to school
Maqwara remembers the day her labour contractions began at 5pm, Sunday May 17 2009.
A government ambulance from the nearby All Saints Hospital ferried her to the hospital.
“I arrived at the hospital at 7pm. I was told that I required an operation that could only be done in the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital,” Maqwara said.
The young woman was only transported to Mthatha at 1pm the following day. “I was finally operated on just after 6pm that night and woke up hours after the operation,” Maqwara said.
She said the first thing she did when she woke up was to check her bedside, hoping she would see her first-born. “I asked the nurse, where is my baby, and she told me that the baby had been attacked by fits during the delivery process.”
Maqwara stayed in hospital for 10 more days while her son was kept under observation.
The department was forced to fork out R12-million for failing to recognise that his mother was a high risk patient who should have been admitted to a higher level medical facility from the outset.
“He is growing old by the day and becoming more heavy to carry when we go to hospital or town,” Maqwara said. She said she was lucky her grandmother, Nosekeni Maqwara, was able to help raise him. “When I’m in school she cares for him.” — zwangam@dispatch.co.za