Seven babies were stillborn in one night at a major Zimbabwean hospital this week because their mothers did not get adequate medical care due to a nurses' strike, according to doctors there.
"This was preventable. Some ruptured their uterus because nobody was there to monitor them, so when interventions were made it was to save the mother," one of the medics told Reuters.
Another doctor said fresh stillbirths - meaning a baby who dies during labour or delivery - were just a window into the state of Zimbabwe's public hospitals, which had become "dysfunctional and a death trap to citizens".
Nurses went on strike countrywide last month over demands that their salaries be paid to them in US dollars, which the government says it cannot afford.
That has left public hospitals with skeleton staff and doctors and senior nurses stretched at a time when the country is grappling with rising Covid-19 cases.
Eight pregnant women underwent Caesarean sections on Monday night at Harare's Sally Mugabe Hospital (formerly called Harare Central Hospital) - the biggest medical facility in the country.
Of these, only one woman successfully delivered a baby, according to three doctors who work in the maternity and paediatric units.
Expectant mothers are spending hours sleeping on benches or the floor in the cold before they are attended to, as smaller clinics which usually absorb some patients are closed due to the strike, piling pressure on major hospitals, doctors said.
Earlier this month, riot police were deployed in Harare after nurses protested about their pay and conditions. They were pictured chasing the demonstrators away from outside Sally Mugabe Hospital.
The Zimbabwe's Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said the situation in hospitals was "beyond dire".
"Simply put, unborn children and mothers are dying daily, or suffering from the repercussions of inadequate care," the organisation said in a statement.
The situation could worsen as an ultimatum for higher pay issued by senior doctors expires this evening without a resolution. The doctors have said they will go on strike.
Commenting on the stillbirths, President Emmerson Mnangagwa's spokesman George Charamba wrote on Twitter; "When the true story gets known, many shall be shocked. There is a limit to what can be done with human lives, tender ones at that, all to mobilise for dead political ends!"
He could not be reached for further comment.
