Left-behind babies highlight cracks in child welfare system

About two years ago, a woman, whom police had picked up on suspicion of theft, fled the Children's Hospital of Shanghai after giving birth to a baby girl. The woman, who was not identified, left her daughter behind in the maternity ward, where the girl has remained ever since.

The girl's mother never returned to claim the child, and the girl's father, a reported drug addict, has remained out of the picture, according to a report in the Youth Daily.

The story of the girl, now a toddler, illustrates an ongoing problem that Shanghai has been dealing with children whose parents have refused to take care of them. Many of these children have found homes in the hospitals where they were born. According to the Shanghai Women's Federation, 1,289 babies have been left behind at 24 city hospitals over the past five years.

A few of the hospitals have complained that the babies interfere with their normal operations. They have also pointed out that a hospital is no place for a child to grow up. However, the hospitals have no other choice than to take care of the children because the city's orphanages only accept children whose parents are either dead or missing.

In fact, most of the parents of these children can be reached, it's just that they have refused to take responsibility for raising their kids.

Money is a factor in many of the cases. The baby in the Youth Daily story was born premature with malfunctioning immune and respiratory systems. According to the Shanghai Women's Federation, 76 percent of the babies abandoned in the city have a physical disability at birth. Many others suffer from some kind of medical condition.

Experts have suggested that authorities should fine parents who abandon their children in this way, according to a report in the Oriental Morning Post.

It seems like an unrealistic solution. I don't believe that parents who leave a baby behind at a hospital can afford a serious fine. Perhaps some of these parents don't care about their kids, but I have to believe that most of them feel they have no other choice than to leave their children in the place where they can get medical treatment.

The problem is a thorny one that requires an overhaul to the child welfare system. Affordable medical services need to be made available to families with disabled or seriously ill children. For extremely impoverished families, these services should be provided for free. In addition, there should be a mechanism that guarantees long-term support, not just materially, but also psychologically, for these families.

For a developing country such as China, it will be difficult to accomplish these goals in the near term. However, the good news is that the country has a growing number of nonprofit organizations and charities dedicated to providing free medical services to children with physical disabilities and common medical conditions, like cleft palates and congenital heart disease.

Families can seek assistance from these organizations. But at present, information about these charities and nonprofits hasn't been made accessible enough to the people who need it, especially families in rural areas.

I believe that the health and civil affairs authorities, especially in less developed second- and third-tier cities, should help promote these services to increase their impact on society. Hospital staff should be better acquainted with these charitable organizations' services so they can better inform needy families.