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.