Plzen, West Bohemia, July 23 (CTK) – Two newborn boys appeared separately in the baby hatch in Plzen’s medical centre within a three-hour period this morning, one of them being in critical condition, local police and hospital have announced.
The first infant was put in the baby hatch at 6:00, the other three hours later, said Ludvik Hess, founder of the country’s network of baby hatches, also known as babyboxes.
The boys are not relatives, doctors said.
The Plzen Teaching Hospital said one of the infants is in a stabilised condition, while the other’s condition is critical.
“Specialists in the neonatology ward have taken care of him,” said a representative of the hospital.
The police remain in contact with the hospital.
“We are waiting for a doctors’ report. The criminal police are checking all circumstances of the case and they have launched criminal proceedings,” regional police spokeswoman Martina Korandova said.
The first baby was found wrapped in a bathrobe, the other in remnants of a greyish cardigan.
Hess said the boys are the fourth and the fifth infants found in the baby hatch that was installed in Plzen in 2011, and the ninth and tenth found in a Czech baby hatch this year.
The first Czech baby hatch was installed in Prague-Hloubetin in June 2005. There are 70 of them now and the installation of further ones is planned.
A total of 156 babies have been found in Czech baby hatches so far, including the two boys in Plzen on Sunday.
Critics say the baby hatches go counter to the Convention on the Child Rights that guarantees children’s right to know their name, identity, nationality and who their parents are.
Paradoxically, one of the loudest critics is Jiri Dort, head of the neonatology ward in the Plzen Teaching Hospital, where the two baby boys were hospitalised since the medical centre where they were found is an outpatient facility, but the town’s only to have a baby hatch.
