Woman gives birth outside clinic after denied treatment

An indigenous woman squats in pain after giving birth, her newborn still bound by the umbilical cord and lying on the ground. It’s a photograph that horrified Mexicans because of where it took place: the lawn outside a medical clinic where the woman had been denied help, and it struck a nerve in a country where inequity is still pervasive.

The government of the southern state of Oaxaca announced it has suspended the health centre’s director, Dr Adrian Cruz, while officials conduct state and federal probes into the Oct 2 incident.

The mother, Irma Lopez, 29, said she and her husband were turned away from the health centre by a nurse who said she was only eight months pregnant and ‘‘still not ready’’ to deliver.

The nurse told her to go outside and walk, and said a doctor could check her in the morning, Lopez said. But an hour and a half later, her water broke, and Lopez gave birth to a son, her third child, while grabbing the wall of a house next to the clinic.

‘‘I didn’t want to deliver like this. It was so ugly and with so much pain,’’ she said, adding she was alone for the birth because her husband was trying to persuade the nurse to call for help.

A witness took the photo and gave it to a news reporter. It ran in several national newspapers, including the full front page of a tabloid, and was widely circulated on the Internet.

The case illustrated the shortcomings of maternal care in Mexico, where hundreds of women still die during or right after pregnancy. It also pointed to the persistent discrimination against Mexico’s indigenous people.

“The photo is giving visibility to a wider structural problem that occurs within indigenous communities: Women are not receiving proper care. They are not being offered quality health services, not even a humane treatment,” said Mayra Morales, Oaxaca’s representative for the national Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.

The federal Health Department said this week it has sent staff to investigate what happened at the Rural Health Centre of the village of San Felipe Jalapa de Diaz. The National Human Rights Commission also began a probe after seeing news reports.