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Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo visits premature twin girls who were among the New Years babies born at Stanger Hospital in KwaDukuza yesterday. Their mother, Veronica Khambule, inset, was pleasantly surprised by their arrival. Picture: Themba Mngomezulu
Leanne Jansen
EXPECTING to give birth in February, Veronica Khambule, of KwaDukuza, was pleasantly surprised when she went into labour yesterday and delivered twin girls.
Tired, but happy, the 31-year-old was the sixth woman to welcome a New Year’s Day baby at the maternity ward at Stanger Hospital.
The twins, weighing 2.1kg and 1.8kg, who were born at 34 weeks, will be siblings to Khambule’s teenaged son, and are regarded as a “blessing” to fill the void left by the death of another of Khambule’s children.
Asked about her hopes for the little girls’ futures, Khambule said: “I can only hope that they’ll grow to be healthy and that they’ll love school.”
By 6am yesterday, 33 newborns had already been born in the province in 2012.
According to Hillcrest astrologer Dion van Zyl, children born yesterday stood a good chance of taking up professions involving medicine and law because of their strength and integrity.
Van Zyl said the babies would be “top of the pile people”, born free of emotional and physical baggage and, therefore, characteristically uncomplicated and optimistic.
In addition, Khambule’s twins, as girls, were less likely to suffer from “health issues” and would be more likely to become human rights activists.
Parents of these children should be warned though, that while sociable, driven and dynamic, such people would be sharp-tongued, Van Zyl said.
Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo, who visited Stanger Hospital’s maternity ward to deliver gifts and to speak on his department’s 2012 resolutions, said special emphasis would be placed on the critical first six days of infants’ lives, and on getting women to visit clinics for check-ups early in their pregnancies.
Dhlomo suggested that church and community leaders aid healthcare workers in keeping tabs on the condition of pregnant women and new mothers, with the focus being on preventative measures.
He urged HIV-positive pregnant women to get started on anti-retrovirals (ARVs), to enable them to give birth to HIV-negative babies. KZN reduced the number of mother-to-child HIV transmissions from 21 percent five years ago to just over two percent in 2011.
This year, Dhlomo said he would push for health infrastructure development and hospital revitalisation projects to be expedited.
