Abandoned Chinese baby found in sewage pipe
A newborn baby that had been flushed down a lavatory headfirst and became lodged in a sewerage pipe has been recued by Chinese fire fighters.
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai and Chris IrvinePosted at 05/28/2013 12:00 PM | Updated as of 05/28/2013 12:00 PMBEIJING – Firefighters in eastern China have rescued an abandoned newborn baby boy lodged in a sewage pipe directly beneath a toilet commode, state television reported, in a case which has sparked anger on social media sites.
There are frequent reports in Chinese media of babies being abandoned, often shortly after birth, a problem attributed variously to young mothers unaware they were pregnant, the birth of an unwanted girl in a society which puts greater value on boys or China’s strict family planning rules.
In the latest case the infant was found in the sewage pipe in a residential building in Jinhua in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang on Saturday afternoon after residents reported the sound of a baby crying, state television said late on Monday.
Firefighters had to remove the pipe and take it to a nearby hospital, where doctors carefully cut around it to rescue the baby boy inside, the report said.
The child is in a stable condition and the police are looking for his parents, state television added.
The case has been widely discussed on China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo due to the graphic nature of the footage, with calls for the parents to be severely punished.
“The parents who did this have hearts even filthier than that sewage pipe,” wrote one user.
NEWS UPDATE! MOTHER FOUND
The abandoned two-day-old child was found in Jinhua, a city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, after residents of a tower block reported hearing crying.
Unable to pull the baby free, firemen were forced to saw off a four-inch wide piece of piping from the floor below and take the infant to hospital still inside the pipe.
The 5lb baby, who still had his placenta attached to his body, was finally extracted from the pipe after nearly an hour, according to a local news website.
Shocking images broadcast on Chinese television showed white-gloved hospital staff using a pair of red pliers and a yellow saw to pull open the pipe.
The boy, whose 22-year-old mother could now face a charge of attempted homicide, had suffered “severe bruising” but was in a “stable condition” at Pujiang People’s Hospital. He is now healthy enough to leave the hospital, which has been paying his medical bills and accepting donations of clothes, baby formula and other gifts.
He has been named Baby No. 59 after the incubator that he was put in. He is now likely to be handed over to social services.
It was not immediately clear how the baby ended up in the lavatory, but one police source in Jinhua claimed that the woman gave birth unexpectedly when she went to the lavatory on Saturday. She then reportedly phoned the landlord, claiming that she heard “weird noises” in the pipe.
“The woman was on the scene during the entire rescue process … and admitted (she was the mother) when we asked her,” the source told Sky News. “We need further investigations to find out if she had any malicious intentions.”
She is said to be in a serious condition due to complications from the delivery.
Police are still looking for the boy’s father.
Cases of abandoned babies are common in China, with young mothers and strict family planning rules often blamed. But Saturday’s case provoked a furious response on Chinese social media sites, with hundreds of thousands of protests posted this week.
“The parents who did this have hearts even filthier than that sewerage pipe,” wrote one user of the Twitter-like Weibo.
Another wrote: “I can never accept or forgive the behavior of dumping the baby with his placenta and umbilical cord attached into the toilet pipe.
“Can these people be called human beings? The animal to human ratio among the grown-ups is rising inexorably.”