I'm So Angry I Lost My Baby

As a class action suit looms for victims of listeriosis, heartbreaking stories are emerging of the human cost of this deadly outbreak 

- Shanaaz Prince

IT’S meant to be one of the best moments in a mother’s life – when you hold your newborn baby in your arms for the first time.

But 26-year-old Vuyani Moledi barely had time to cradle her tiny son before he was rushed off to ICU. Two days later she watched in anguish at the decreasing numbers on the heart monitor as her baby boy, Orefile, lay d y- ing in front of her.

“I saw him take his last breath,” Vuyani says, sobbing. “I thought, ‘There’s no way my child could die.’ I prayed God would take me and not him.”

Subsequent tests revealed the newborn had died as a result of being infected by the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes – or listeria for short.

Unborn babies are highly susceptible to the bacteria, which enter the mother’s bloodstream, travel straight to the placenta and infect the fetus.

Vuyani, who’s single and a public management student, had heard of the listeriosis outbreak when she fell pregnant but its source hadn’t yet been discovered.

During her pregnancy she made sure she ate well, stocking up on fruit and vegetables.

She also ate a lot of Enterprise Foods products “from Vienna sausages to polony, ham and all that nice stuff. We always had them at home.”

Now, of course, the main source of the outbreak is only too well known: an Enterprise factory in Polokwane, where the bacteria were so widespread that health inspectors found it in the airconditioning vents, the meat-slicing machine and even the metal clips used to secure tubes of polony.

Vuyani’s is one of many stories that have driven home the horror and heartbreak of an outbreak that’s killed at least 180 people and affected more than 1 000 in the biggest listeriosis epidemic the world has ever seen.