August 23, 2021 – An Afghan woman went into labor on board an evacuation plane that landed in Germany on Saturday
US airmen helped deliver the baby on the C-17 aircraft. The woman and her baby, whose identity was unknown, were taken to a nearby medical facility. They are both in good shape.
The flight took off from a “stopover in the Middle East,” according to a statement on the US Air Mobility Command’s Facebook page. It was not revealed when the woman left Afghanistan.
During the flight, the woman went into labor and had complications from low blood pressure.
“The aircraft commander made the decision to descend in order to increase the air pressure in the aircraft, which has helped stabilize and save the mother’s life,” the Facebook post said.
After the plane landed at Ramstein Air Force Base in southwest Germany, medical personnel from the 86th Medical Group boarded the plane and gave birth to the baby in the hold. The mother and baby were then taken to a medical facility for further care.
As of Sunday, more than 6,000 evacuees from Afghanistan had flown to Ramstein Air Force Base, and more flights are expected in the coming days, a spokesman for the air force base told NBC News. A total of 25,000 people have been evacuated since August 15.
Thousands more are waiting to flee, NBC News reported. The US will use commercial aircraft to transport people after the evacuation from Afghanistan, the Department of Defense said on Sunday.
The 18 planes – operated by American, Atlas, Delta, Hawaiian, Omni and United Airlines – will not fly into Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. Instead, they are used to “move passengers from temporarily safe ports and intermediate bases,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement on Sunday.
This is the third time the Civil Reserve Air Fleet has been activated. The first time it supported Operation Desert Shield / Storm was between August 1990 and May 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. The second was Operation Iraqi Freedom between February 2002 and June 2003 after the invasion of Iraq.
“We have agreements with about two dozen countries on four continents that are now or soon to help with the transit of people from Kabul,” Foreign Minister Antony Blinken told Fox News on Sunday.
“This is one way to ensure that we have enough flight capacity to get people from these places to their final destinations,” he said.
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