A woman is suing a hospital over medical negligence after she delivered a severed baby head with the rest of the body remaining trapped inside the womb for more than 24 hours.
Kagiso Kgatla was six months pregnant when she suffered a botched delivery at Tambo Memorial Hospital in South Africa.
The 19-year-old was asked to push the baby but after several attempts with little success the doctors intervened to help her deliver, as reported by South Africa's eNCA Tv.
"The doctor came and said I should push. I pushed and pushed. Nothing. He inserted his hands and said I should try again but still there was nothing...He also said he could see the baby's head," she said.
The teen accused the doctor of cutting off her baby's head on grounds that it had very little chances of surviving.
"Then he asked for those big spoons. That's when my baby's head came out, but only the head, the body remained inside," she said.
The hospital's head of obstetrics Gilbert Anyetei said they had informed Kagiso the baby could have some abnormalities but she insisted on carrying the pregnancy.
"Normally, when the head is not crowning we assist. We call it assisted delivery. In this particular instance the head popped out on its own and we tried to see if the rest of the body would follow, but it didn't follow," said Anyetei.
The hospital administrators have launched investigations into the case to know where the delivery went wrong.
However, it is not the first case of botched delivery given in 2014 a Scotish woman suffered almost the same fate when her baby's head was left inside the womb during labour at Ninewells Hospital in Scotland.
During investigations, the hospital was faulted for not trying the cesarean delivery in to save the baby's life.