A mother whose baby died in her womb says she feels violated by the delays and indifference she experienced in the government’s provincial health system.Mdantsane resident Fundiswa Maqashu complained to the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) that she was sent home from Cecilia Makiwane Hospital (CMH) in Mdantsane with the lifeless foetus still inside her and told to return in two weeks. She fell ill and returned before the fortnight was up, but still had to wait eight days in the labour ward before the child was surgically removed by caesarian section surgery.During that time, she claimed, the foetus was decomposing inside her but she kept missing her turn to be wheeled into theatre because mothers with living babies needed to be treated first.Adding to her tears, Maqashu received a call from the hospital two months after she was discharged telling her to come back to the hospital to complete paperwork because her child was still in the hospital mortuary.Maqashu had been going to the Gonubie clinic for prenatal care because she worked in the area. Because state clinics do not do scans, when she was six months pregnant she was referred to CMH for a scan. When she went to the hospital she was given a date for the scheduled scan. “My scan was to be done on March 22 and when they did it they told me my baby had died. "They said I should go home and return after two weeks. “I was devastated. I had abdominal pain before the two weeks were up so I returned to the hospital on March 30 and was admitted [to the labour ward],” she said.Maqashu said she suffered extreme heartache in hospital.“I could hear people crying out because they were in labour but their cries turned into laughter when they held their babies in their arms. “For days I withered away in self-pity and brokenness as other women would come and go. I was neglected and isolated to a side ward with a large window.“I could sense people’s pity because I was there and they knew my baby was dead. We shared the same bathroom but we were not going to share the same outcome at the end of it all,” she said.Maqashu said she was turned away from the theatre three times because there were “people whose babies were alive and they needed to deliver there”. She was discharged on April 11 without receiving any counselling or being told anything about what was happening to her baby’s body.“Doctors could not tell me what killed my child. She was already six months old when she died and I carried her in my body for [another] month before they took her out,” she said.Maqashu said was phoned by someone at the hospital on May 30 saying they forgot to ask her to sign a form releasing the baby’s body into the hospital’s care. A week later she was called and told the hospital needed an affidavit giving the hospital permission to bury the child.“I had never lost a child before. No-one told me whether the hospital was to bury her or that I should take her home. I was not even offered counselling,” she said.Maqashu complained to the hospital management and had no joy and then wrote to the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) about her ordeal.OHSC’s Deborah Lamola confirmed that she was the investigator assigned to Maqashu’s case.Provincial health spokesman Lwandile Sicwetsha said doctors could take up to two weeks before delivering a still-born because they first induce the mother. Surgery was the last option.“I will escalate the matter to the quality assurance manager at the hospital to find out what happened with the paperwork,” said Sicwetsha. “It is understandable that the mother was going through the pain of losing her unborn child.” — siyat@dispatch.co.za..