A two-day-old baby girl was found abandoned in Visakhapatnam’s Victoria General Hospital on Sunday night, while the parents of the baby are yet to be traced.
According to police, on Monday, the authorities of Victoria Hospital called them stating that a woman named Joga Devi, a resident of Malkapuram in the city, had left her baby in the hospital.
“No case has been registered, but the hospital authority has informed us,” said One Town police.
"She was admitted to the hospital with labour pain on Saturday morning at around 9.30am and gave birth to the baby girl at 1.30pm the same day," Hospital superintendent Dr K Hemalatha told Times of India.
Soon after the incident, the hospital authorities approached the women and child welfare department.
According to the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) in Andhra Pradesh, this has been the fifth case in the past one week, where the parents have abandoned their children in Visakhapatnam.
SCPCR chairperson S Balaraju, speaking to The News Minute said, “Now the baby girl has been shifted to Sishu Gruha till the government finds her mother. These cases have been increasing every year. In the past three years, as many as 28 babies were found abandoned by their families in Visakhapatnam alone.”
He also said that in most of the cases, families belonging to poor backgrounds who migrate from neighbouring states like Odisha and Chhattisgarh, abandoned their new-born babies.
“There can be several reasons. One of the reasons I have noticed is premature children. If the child is born weak, the parents feel they cannot take care of the child so they abandon the child in hospitals, garbage bins and temples. The main reason is poverty, when parents can’t afford to take care of their children’s education and medical expenses, they abandon them,” he added.
In the past two years, there have been more than 100 cases of abandoned new-borns in the state.