Thursday, September 2, 2010

A baby is recovering in hospital after being dumped on a street corner within hours of being born.

Staff at Al Qassimi Hospital have taken the tiny infant to their hearts, even though they know virtually nothing about her.

Her mother’s name is simply listed as “Unknown Unknown”. Her date of birth is a question mark, so is the place of delivery. Her medical history is a double question mark, written in blue pen.

The only facts confirmed on the medical card are her chart number and her weight - which is 1.285kg.

The baby girl is just three days old.

She was found in a wooden box in a street corner in Sharjah, wrapped in a blanket and suffering from dehydration.  It is thought that she was just a day old when she was discovered.

A man walking to his house heard a baby’s cry from the box and called the police.

Officers rushed her to Sharjah’s Al Qassimi hospital, where she is now being treated in the post-natal intensive care unit.

When 7DAYS visited yesterday, she was asleep in her incubator, an intravenous clip attached to her right wrist, a heat monitor attached to the base of her foot.

The abandoned child is the only baby at the hospital without family visits and the question marks on her card attest to how alone she is in her first week of life.

Although we were allowed to visit, the hospital asked that we didn’t take any photographs of the child.

Police say they don’t know for sure if the mother lives in the downbeat Muwailih industrial district where she was found. However, they are using sniffer dogs at the site of the discovery in the hope of finding the mother and reuniting her with her baby.

Abandoned babies are not uncommon in Sharjah, as well as other emirates.

Earlier this year, 7DAYS reported how a dead newborn baby was discovered in Sharjah.

At the time the police said it was the third one they had come across in recent months.

This latest abandoned baby is expected to survive, but she will go into care unless her family is found.

Doctor Raymond Hamden, a psychologist at the Human Relations Institute in Knowledge Village, said abandoning a baby was an act of desperation.
“The mother may find life impossible with an unmarried pregnancy. “Others who give up their babies are so poor they plan to sell their newborn to enable others in the family to survive,” he said.

Dr Hamden said he deals with a handful of women a year who want to give up their babies and gets calls from pregnant women who don’t know what to do and are afraid of becoming victims of ‘honour killings’ for having a baby outside marriage.

He pleaded with women thinking of abandoning their child to seek comfort from a family member they believe they can trust. “That’s not always available and then they don’t know who to turn to,” he said.

sean.odriscoll@7days.ae