Meet a Kenyan Doctor Who Performed a C-Section While Carrying Her Baby on Her Back

A Kenyan doctor who earned praise for performing a surgical operation while carrying her baby has spoken out years later.

Photos of Dr. Swabra Swaleh Briek, a gynecologist, conducting a cesarean section on an expectant woman while carrying her son on her back went viral on social media, triggering massive reactions.

The incident happened at Ol Kalou District Hospital in Nyandarua County in December 2016 after she was called to attend to a case of a pregnant woman who urgently needed cesarean delivery.

At the time, Dr. Swabra’s nanny had left for burial while her husband worked in another hospital hundreds of kilometers away.

The hospital had only one doctor covering the hospital every night and all weekend and no nurse would have helped carry the baby as they were all engaged in the labor suite. The only available nurse covering the hospital had gone for a referral to Nakuru Provincial General Hospital.

“Government hospitals as we know, have skeleton staff during the weekends. My son was crying; do I leave him down as I do the surgery?” Dr. Swabra said during an interview on TV47 on Monday.

She added: “In my head that time, I had a woman who was in front of me dying and had I not gone into surgery with my son on the back, we probably would have lost her.”

Fortunately, her son slept throughout the procedure and the surgery was successful.

Dr. Swabra, who is now stationed at Premier Hospital in Mombasa, said the woman named the child “Swabra”, in honor of the gynecologist.