Cop turns midwife, delivers baby on the street

History happened in Ashaiman on the night of Wednesday, March 20, when an off-duty police officer helped a woman in labour to deliver on a pavement.

According to eyewitnesses, the lady, who is a resident of New York, a suburb of Zenu in the Kpone-Katamanso District, near Tema, was on her way to hospital that night.

Just after alighting at Ashaiman from a vehicle to board another to the hospital, she felt birth pains and realised the baby was coming out, eyewitnesses narrated.

The expectant mother was therefore helped onto a pavement near a private school called Saint Mary?'s International, where screams attracted several onlookers; a situation, eyewitnesses narrated, was a helpless one as both women and men appeared unable to help.

Lance Corporal John Baah of the Ashaiman District Police, who had then closed from work and was going home, spotted the crowd and, thinking the gathering could be as a result of some lawlessness, moved there to maintain law and order; only to be met with a young woman in labour.

Eyewitnesses said the officer, as if he had worked as a midwife before, quickly squatted in front of the labouring woman and helped her push out her baby.

When Lance Corporal Baah was contacted at the station, he confirmed the story, saying: ?"When I got to the scene, I saw that the head of the baby was out and watching the glaring pain on the face of the woman and how she was struggling to push out the baby, I was compelled to do what I coult at that moment to salvage the situation.?"

He said he had to use the woman?'s cloth to cover the emerging baby to avoid public view, adding that he later arranged for a vehicle to take both mother and baby to the Ashaiman Polyclinic for professional medical attention.

Checks by the Finder on Monday revealed that both mother and baby were doing well. The husband pleaded that he did not want his family?'s identity to be known.