Many “safe havens” that are supposed to adopt abandoned babies in China have shut down because of the large number of babies that were turned to the institutions’ care since they opened, Beijing News reported on Wednesday.
Thirty-two infant care shelters have been established throughout the country since the first baby hatch was employed back in 2011. However, the number of abandoned babies overwhelmed many of the baby hatches.
In Jan. 2014, the Guangzhou Children Welfare Center opened a “safe haven” but was forced to shut it down after only two months of operation. The facility was not able to support the 262 babies they were sheltering during the period.
In Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, a “safe haven” also encountered the same situation. In a span of three months, it has already sheltered 140 babies, a figure equal to the total number of abandoned babies it received for the previous year.
According to an insider, the lack of nurses and funds are big hindrances in the maintenance of the “safe havens.”
An anonymous Xiamen Children Welfare Center staff revealed: “We are short-staffed, but it's hard to recruit new nurses as the pay is not attractive enough.”
Though this has been the situation for such facilities in the country’s larger cities, infant care centers located in less developed areas are sheltering and accommodating fewer number of abandoned babies.
For instance, a baby hatch based in a Guizhou Province city said that it has only received several babies annually, citing the facility’s remote location.
Tong Xiaojun, the head of the Children’s Research Institute of China, said that “if ‘save havens’ can be set up in more places across the country, it can relieve the pressure off those in large cities.”
Meanwhile, other experts stressed the need for a stronger attitude against child and baby abandonment to fully sustain the development of institutions like infant care centers.