After the sudden and heart breaking loss of my dear friend's 8 week old baby I am motivated to start this petition so that The South African Home Affairs Department  rethinks its law which prevents young children, particularly babies, who have not yet had passports issued in their own names travelling to South Africa for emergency medical treatment. 

Beautiful baby Tailyn urgently and suddenly needed life-saving dialysis which was only available to her in South Africa. These types of medical emergencies can go from stable to critical in a few short hours, as was the case with her. She was a tiny baby and any build-up of toxins in the blood can rapidly become life threatening. Zimbabwe, and its failing healthcare system, did not have any equipment to help this precious angel. Her only hope of survival lay an hour and a half's flight away. But she did not yet have a passport due to delays in documents being issued because of the Covid pandemic. She was not allowed to travel on her mother's passport despite the urgency of the situation, and with this cruel decision the South African blanket rule policy ended the last hope of medical life-saving intervention.

By the time, at 3am, (an all-night endeavour undertaken by Earth Angels in Zimbabwe and the Immigration Department of Zimbabwe), a passport was issued for her, she had passed.

Her parents, sisters and grandparents, extended family and friends have been left devastated by the unnecessary loss of such a precious, innocent life. I ask as many of you as possible to sign this petition and forward it to all your friends and family members to do the same. Tailyn's tragically short life must not be for nothing. Let it be to bring a change to this law, and with that change, the hope of saving other precious lives in Zimbabwe and other neighbouring countries, which rely on South Africa's more advanced and better equipped healthcare facilities.

Please help me stop this tragedy from ever happening to another family. A tragedy that has forever scarred my friend and her family because of the loss of their precious, adored, prayed-for baby girl. My heart breaks just writing this.