Joburg women help deliver homeless woman’s baby in cemetery

Joburg residents Waolea Minnaar and Tarren Roodt stepped up to help a homeless woman deliver her baby in the Brixton Cemetery before the ambulance arrived two hours later on Monday.

Their selfless act highlighted the poor service of the Johannesburg Municipality’s ambulance services, the Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for the city, Mpho Phalatse, said following a report of the incident.

Phalatse expressed his gratitude to Joburg woman, Minnaar, who is standing for ward 58 as a DA candidate in the upcoming municipal elections, and Roodt who is an activist for the party for their “heroic act in helping a displaced female deliver her baby”.

“Despite the ambulance only arriving almost two hours after they were called, both Minnaar and Roodt stepped up beyond their duties as citizens, in helping a desperate woman with no immediate access to emergency services. At the time, the pregnant woman was living in the Brixton cemetery,” Phalatse  said.

“While waiting for the ambulance, another DA activist went to the Brixton fire station no more than approximately 200 metres away from the pregnant woman. The activist was allegedly told that only councillors can request fire trucks and ambulances. This was despite a desperate woman, needing urgent medical attention while firefighters are trained for this type of situation,” he said.

Phalatse said that while ordinary Joburg citizens came to the rescue of this woman, the Johannesburg Municipality still had a responsibility to ensure responsive emergency services. 

“The municipality’s fleet of ambulances has shrunk from 101 to 0, since the ANC took over in November 2019. This has been exacerbated by the ANC provincial government’s Provincialisation of Ambulances Programme, which saw the city’s Emergency Management Services’ (EMS) ambulance services come to a halt in June of this year,” Phalatse said.

“At the moment, the provincial department of Health is the custodian of ambulance services in the city.”

He said that in June 2019, the DA administration in Johannesburg had delivered 42 brand new state-of-the-art ambulances to the EMS, boosting its fleet by 72% to 101 ambulances. 

“This meant that each fire station across the city received at least one new ambulance, with the majority of new ambulances allocated to fire stations in townships. Just before the suspension of the ambulance services in June this year under the ANC government, the city was running at less than 10 ambulances per shift,” he said.

Phalatse said that the municipality needed to urgently apply for its own operating license, so that municipal ambulances could get back on the road to assist people who cannot afford private medical care or ambulance services.