A North West mother says she was told at the local hospital to take her baby home to die after he was born with a condition doctors could not treat.

"They told me to go back home and wait for my baby to die. I was confused and cried after hearing this," she said.

This was after Baitshepi Leselo, 30, from a Vryburg informal settlement gave birth to Goitsemodimo on May 15. The baby was born with his brain out of his skull (encephalocele).

Leselo said after giving birth she and the baby were transferred from the Joe Morolong Hospital to Klerksdorp Hospital for an operation.

She said when they arrived at Klerksdorp Hospital, the neurosurgeon said it was too risky for the baby to be operated on, and that she must go back home as there was nothing they could do.

She was sent back to Joe Morolong, and when she arrived there her husband Eric Leselo and her mother were called in. That was when a senior health official from the district explained the condition to them.

"She told us that it was impossible for my baby to live for two weeks and that we must go back home and wait for him to die ... but I was confident that he would survive," she said.

Eric said their son's condition is painful. "I don't sleep well at night ... when he is too quiet, I pinch him or shake him to check whether he is still alive," he said.

Goitsemodimo's head releases liquid, so his bandages have to be changed every three days at the hospital.

"Nurses are also scared of him; some refuse to dress him, and we have to wait for a brave nurse to assist him," the father said. "I wonder how he is going to crawl or walk with the brain as big as this. If we had money or medical aid we could have attended to his condition while the brain was still small," Leselo said.

While her husband is unemployed, Leselo is a temporary worker at the local municipality. She patrols the streets at night, earning R4500 a month.

Health MEC Magome Masike said the doctor could be charged for being insensitive.

"It does not sound correct [what the family was told], but it needs to be confirmed so that we can charge the doctor."

Masike said the baby's brain was inoperable.

"When the baby is like that there is nothing we can do, we cannot operate it."

Low folic acid can spark cyst

A neurosurgeon from Garden City Clinic in Johannesburg, Dr Yusuf Osman, said the condition appears to be a microcephaly (small head and brain) with a huge encephalocele (cyst outside of skull).

Osman said encephalocele is a rare type of birth defect of the neural tube that affects the brain. He said it affects one out of 20000 babies and he could only tell how long the baby can live after reading the x-ray.

"The neural tube is a narrow channel that folds and closes during the third and fourth weeks of pregnancy to form the brain and spinal cord," he said.

Osman said encephalocele was a sac-like protrusion or projection of the brain and the membranes that cover it through an opening in the skull.

Encephalocele happens when the neural tube does not close completely during pregnancy. The result is an opening anywhere along the centre of the skull, often at the back of the head.

He said the causes of this congenital maldevelopment were mostly unknown.

"Some congenital anomalies are due to change in their genes or chromosomes. It might also be caused by a combination of genes and other factors, such as the things the mother comes in contact with in the environment or what the mother eats or drinks, or certain medicines she uses during pregnancy," he said.

He said low intake of folic acid before getting pregnant and in early pregnancy increases the risk of having a pregnancy affected by neural tube defects. Osman said it could be treated but the outcome was poor.

"He (the neurosurgeon) will need to surgically remove the cyst outside of the skull and the outcome and prognosis is poor," he said. - Boitumelo Tshehle