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Woman in India gives birth in Uber cab after ambulance unavailable

The woman named the baby Uber after giving birth in a taxi operated by the app-based company

By Sunrita Sen
DPA

NEW DELHI — A woman in the Indian capital has named her baby Uber after she gave birth in a taxi operated by the app-based company, a news report said Saturday.

The woman phoned Uber for the cab after repeated calls to a hospital for an ambulance went unanswered on Thursday night, the Times of India newspaper said.

The woman accompanied by two female friends wanted to be taken to a state-run hospital near her home in Dehli, the newspaper quoted the driver of the taxi, Shahnawaz, as saying.

“I had asked them to call an ambulance, but the women said that they couldn’t get one,” the taxi driver said.

During the journey he had to stop because the woman was in great pain.

“I pulled out the towels from the seats and poured some drinking water into a bowl.

The child was born within minutes and I was really happy to see that he was responding,” Shahnawaz said.

As soon as the delivery was done, Shahnawaz rushed the woman and her new-born baby son to the Safdarjung Hospital.

He said the doctors first asked him if he was the husband and after he told them what had happened, they congratulated him.

Shahnawaz has been invited on Sunday to a ceremony where the newborn’s family want him to name the child – Uber – after the cab company Shahnawaz works for.

The incident is welcome publicity for Uber, which has been in the news after a 25-year-old woman was raped by one of its drivers a year ago in Delhi.

A local court sentenced the driver to life imprisonment in November.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

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