CAIRO: An Egyptian hospital director was suspended on Monday after a video purporting to show a woman giving birth on the facility’s doorstep caused an uproar among citizens tired of overcrowded and understaffed medical centers.
The woman’s husband, Ahmed Musa Abdel Fattah, was quoted by Al-Ahram as saying the couple were turned away by hospital staff who told them the only doctor was busy performing a Caesarean section on another woman.
In the video, uploaded to YouTube and published on news sites, the woman, covered by her veil and a sheet as she lies on her back in the street, appears to go into labor outside Kafr Al-Dawar Public Hospital. Two nurses later run outside, duck under the sheet and emerge with a baby in a pink blanket.
The hospital in Kafr Al-Dawar, said staff were ready and willing to deliver the baby and the video was a ploy by the woman’s family to discredit the facility.
MENA said the provincial health minister had suspended the hospital director pending an investigation.
Official suspended as Egypt woman delivers baby outside hospital
Updated 20 October 2014