Prague, Oct 31 (CTK) – Czech paediatricians have criticised baby hatches that have been used in the Czech Republic for ten years, arguing that they deprive children of their identity, daily Pravo wrote on Saturday.
The debate on them was stirred up again after the founder of the network of baby hatches or baby-boxes in the Czech Republic, Ludvik Hess, was awarded a medal of merit by President Milos Zeman on October 28, national holiday marking the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918.
Zeman said he had received a letter from the paediatricians´ associations calling on him not to decorate Hess.
A baby hatch is an incubator in which as woman may anonymously leave her unwanted newborn baby without threatening the baby’s life or health. Health care personnel in the respective hospital receives a signal from the “full” box and can look after the baby immediately.
The first baby hatch in the Czech Republic was installed in Prague in 2005. So far 67 of them have been opened all over the country and they have saved 127 newborn babies.
Their critics say baby hatches are not needed in the Czech Republic that enables anonymous child deliveries, which can sufficiently protect babies. Moreover, the neighbouring Germany have gradually given up the use of baby hatches, they argue.
“All the talk about how many lives they [baby hatches] save is nonsense since the number of killed newborn babies has remained the same, according to police statistics. We do not consider the existence of baby-boxes necessary,” Frantisek Schneiberg, chairman of the Social Paediatrics Society, told Pravo.
The statistics show that the number of proved cases of newborn babies being murdered by their mothers has not changed in the past years. Since 2010, the police have revealed maximally one such a murder a year, except for 2003 and 2006 when three and two babies were murdered, respectively, Pravo writes.
Zeman defended Hess in his speech at the award-giving ceremony at Prague Castle, the presidential seat, on Wednesday.
“I follow the principle saying ´Whoever saves one life saves the entire humankind.´ And if one child would have ended up in dustbin without a baby-box, its founder deserves respect,” Zeman said.
Hess also dismissed the criticism of baby-boxes.
He points out that hundreds of thousands of people living in the Czech Republic do not know their parents, but those who were thrown into a dustbin after the birth did not survive.
However, Schneiberg says mothers have enough options to abandon their newborn babies legally without depriving them of their identity – they can sign a consent to adoption, leave the baby in a maternity hospital or in an infant home.
The mothers who decide to put the babies into a hatch act rationally, while those who throw them into a dustbin, for instance, after the delivery act emotionally, in a shock, and no hatch would help them, Schneiberg also said.
In addition, disabled babies an those maltreated by their mothers have been found in the hatches.
“In such cases, the anonymity is positive for the mother, but as a paediatrician I should defend the interest of the child and this is no good for them,” he said.
Dana Lipova, from the Sirius foundation, would not condemn the practice of baby hatches so strictly. She admits that they are no ideal solution.
“However, until really anonymous child deliveries are legalised, baby-boxes are functional and they save babies,” she said, adding that at present, even an anonymous childbirth is registered with a health insurer and data on it can be found eventually.
