Gauteng has welcomed 13 New Year's newborn babies thus far, nine of them being boys and four of them being girls.
This was revealed by the provincial Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg on January 1.
Nkomo-Ralehoko made a lighthearted comment about more boys being born than girls and extended a warm welcome to the babies and wished the mothers well in raising their children.
“We have 13 babies that we have received on New Year's Day... which is critical... we had a baby that was born at midnight. But what I don’t like, because I am a woman, it's nine boys...,” she said jokingly, adding that she was not happy about that because she hoped for more girls and fewer boys.
"I am biased towards girls," she said.
Breaking it down to nationalities, Nkomo-Ralehoko confirmed that all the babies were South African except for one.
She also hailed the new structures that they have put in place that can identify the nationalities.
"We have all of them except one that is a Mozambican, the rest out of the 13 which is 12 are South African children," she said.
"Can you see the improvement again in terms of our stats because of the eHealth that we have introduced? Now we are no longer thumb-sucking the numbers, we know this child is a South African."
Furthermore, the MEC encouraged mothers to immunise their children to protect them against preventable diseases and also to breastfeed them.
She also provided them with birth certificates.
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