Court hears evidence against midwife accused of causing baby deaths and disabilities

The Pretoria midwife Yolande Maritz Fouchee, who allegedly caused babies to either die or be born disabled while she was in charge of delivering them, is facing 14 charges in the Gauteng High Court, including one of culpable homicide.

Fouchee, 48, now a deregistered nurse, denied any wrongdoing, and in a lengthy plea, explained that she did everything according to the book when she delivered the babies.

But one of the mothers, Carien Möller, on Tuesday testified that her daughter Sophia was born in July 2019 with cerebral palsy. She is blaming Fouchee for her child’s condition. Fouchee, in turn, claimed that the child was born this way because Möller had a bladder infection while she was pregnant and she refused to take antibiotics to clear it up.

The court was told that baby Sophia was blue in the face when she was born and that she had to be resuscitated for about 20 minutes before she could breathe normally.

The 14 charges against Fouchee include nine charges of assault on four mothers and their babies. It is claimed that she gave the mothers Cytotec and Oxytocin before delivering the babies, allegedly to hasten the birthing process. They were allegedly told that it was a Rescue Remedy which they were to consume.

The court heard that Fouchee handled between 16 to 24 deliveries a month at her You&Me delivery centre in Pretoria East, for which she charged from R16 000 upwards per delivery.

One of the charges Fouchee is facing is that she called her daughter in to assist her with the deliveries. Her daughter, the prosecution said, does not hold any medical qualifications.

The culpable homicide charge against Fouchee follows the death of a baby, born in 2020, who had died within minutes of her birth.

Another charge relates to a baby boy born with cerebral palsy and visual impairment. It is claimed that Fouchee was unable to deliver the baby and refused to transport the mother to hospital, so that she could give birth via an emergency C-section.

It is claimed that Fouchee instead used forceps in an attempt to deliver the baby, despite the pleas of the mother that she wanted to go to hospital. It is alleged that her actions during labour resulted in oxygen deprivation to the fetus, causing injury to the brain.

The baby was born blue and unresponsive, and the prosecution claimed that it cannot be ruled out that the baby’s bleeding on the brain was caused by the forceps used by Fouchee.

The mothers are all due to still testify in Fouchee’s trial, with Möller being the first mother to take the stand. She explained that she saw Fouchee’s credentials on Facebook and she was very impressed with them.

As she delivered her first child via C-section, she wanted a natural, water birth for her second child. A doula who assisted Möller in her delivery told the court that Fouchee had a “we call the baby protocol” in place, which meant that Fouchee usually decided when a baby should be born. She then had methods at hand in which to enhance the births, the court was told.

The trial is proceeding before Judge Papi Mosopa, who is sitting on the bench with an assessor, who is a medical doctor, to assist him.

Cape Times