Italy:Italy is reinventing the wheel to save babies from being abandoned in garbage bins.
Family affairs minister Rosy Bindi says she wants every hospital in Italy to have a modern-day version of the mediaeval "foundling wheel" where unwanted newborns were left at convents.
Over the weekend, a baby was abandoned in a high-tech hatch installed recently in a hospital in a poor neighbourhood on Rome's southern outskirts. The person who left the child entered a room accessible only from the outside, pushed open a glass hatch, and left the baby in a heated crib inside.
Electronic sensors detected movement in the crib and set off an alarm for doctors at the Casilino hospital, who arrived in 40 seconds and took care of the baby boy they named Stefano.
Medieval foundling wheels were wooden cylinders set in the wall of a convent or church. The baby was placed in the cylinder from the outside; it would then be turned towards the inside, where nuns would care for the baby and seek new parents.
Hardly a month goes by without a news report about a newborn found abandoned at the side of the road or, more commonly, in a garbage bin on a city street. The lucky ones are found alive.
"I hope the mother of the baby boy left in the Casilino hospital will find the hope and courage to reconsider. If she needs help, we will help her find it," said Ms Bindi. "In any case, this difficult and painful decision took place in a safe environment and that in itself is something good . . . a good alternative to abandoning a baby on the street."
The Casilino hospital, located in an area where many immigrants live, had pasted posters with the appeal "Don't abandon your baby - leave it with us" in six languages, including Chinese and Romanian. The poster shows two hands holding a newborn. A hospital in the northern city of Bergamo has begun a similar initiative.
While some of the abandoned babies were children of immigrants, having a child out of wedlock still carries a stigma in Catholic Italy and some babies are believed to have had Italian parents.
- (Reuters)