PATNA: A woman gave birth to a baby boy while travelling in a bus to a nearby hospital in Bihar’s West Champaran district on Sunday. The boy’s overjoyed grandmother named him “Sarbaz”, meaning caravan leader.
When Aamna Khatun, 27, underwent severe labour pain inside the bus, her husband Shahim Khan and her parents were at a loss for what to do. They had boarded the bus at Dhumatand Colony and the government hospital at Mainatand they were heading for was still a few kilometers away.
But the driver and conductor of the bus stopped the vehicle and asked all men passengers to get down. Then, the women passengers facilitated the delivery. Aamna Khatun and the baby were then taken the hospital, where they were both provided primary medication.
“Both the mother and the child are doing well. There is nothing for them to worry about,” said Dr Lakshmi Narayan Singh, the in-charge medical officer of the government hospital at Mainatand.
When the nurses, doctors and staff of the hospital learnt that the baby was born inside a moving bus, they congratulated the baby’s family and the staff of the bus with thunderous rounds of clapping. Many of the passengers of the bus had also gathered at the hospital to make sure the baby boy and his mother got proper medical care.
For Sahwani Khatun, the baby’s maternal grandmother, the birth was sort of a miracle. “I am grateful to Allah Almighty and the staff and passengers of the bus that this delivery remained safe,” she said.
With the hospital staff insisting that the boy be named at the hospital itself, Sahwani chose a name for her grandson that was associated with the exact place of his birth. She chose the word Sarbaz, Persian for “leader of caravan”.
The boy’s father, Shahim Khan, a resident of Raxaul, said Aamna, who was full nine months pregnant, had to board a bus for the hospital because it was difficult to get an ambulance. “Whenever anyone asks for a government ambulance, they are told that no ambulance is free. Private ambulances charge too much,” he said.