"Illegal immigrants" blamed for overburdened healthcare system after video goes viral of pregnant women laying helpless in city hospital

The Patriotic Alliance's City of Joburg MMC for Health and Social Development, Ashley Sauls has lambasted the state of the city's "overburdened" healthcare system, blaming its bed shortage problems on the "overlooking of controlling illegal immigration".

Sauls shared these sentiments at the weekend after posting a video that has since gone viral of his walkabout inside the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital in Johannesburg on Saturday.

In the short clip shared on his social media, scores of heavily pregnant women can be seen laying on the floor of the passage of the hospital seemingly in line to receive medical attention.

According to Sauls account of the situation, following his assessment and conversations with the hospital matrons, some of the women were waiting in queues for over three days, only receiving blood pressure tests and nothing more.

Sauls claimed that the real issues stemmed from undocumented immigrants who had "inundated" the city's hospitals.

"Our health systems are overburdened due to the overlooking of controlling illegal immigration," he exclaimed.

Sauls added that the local, provincial and national leadership needs to put their heads together to deal with the immigration problems head-on, with the directive of putting "South Africans first".