Special boxes that allow mothers to abandon their newborn babies with no questions asked have now spread from Germany and Hungary to Italy.
Germany and Hungary introduced such boxes in separate but similar initiatives about five years ago to help prevent dozens of deaths of newborn babies abandoned on the streets.
The boxes are the high tech, modern equivalent of the old medieval foundling wheels operated by orphanages in Padua from the 1400s until 1888. The wheels were a circular wooden board half inside and half outside the orphanages run by nuns. Mothers placed their unwanted newborns on the board and rang a bell, and the nuns would spin the board to find the child.
The modern incubators, dubbed the baby post boxes by the European media, are installed in hospitals and can be opened from the inside or outside, much like bank deposit boxes. Mothers place the baby inside the heated box and can leave it safe in the knowledge that heat sensors will alert a trained medical expert to its presence.
It is believed that since the scheme began in Germany as many as 200 babies have been deposited in the boxes, most of whom are reunited with their families soon afterwards. Exact figures are hard to come by as the boxes are operated regionally.
A similar system operates in Hungary, but there mothers must enter the hospital’s reception area and place their infant in an incubator (BMJ 1999;319:214).
Italy traditionally has strong family ties, and there is little tolerance for the idea that a mother might abandon her child. However, the anti–contraception principles of the Catholic country and a growth in illegal immigration have been linked to a sharp rise in the number of babies abandoned on Italian streets in recent years. In one week recently the bodies of three babies were found in bins outside hospitals—one Chinese, one African, and another from Ukraine—and the National Association for Adoptive and Foster Families estimates that about 400 newborns are abandoned every year and that the number has been increasing at about 10% a year.
Grazia Passeri, head of the Civil Rights 2000 Association, which is pioneering the scheme, said that something drastic needed to be done: “Usually it is only after the mother has had a haemorrhage or suffers some other medical complication that we get to know about these babies.
“Often the babies are weak because of a difficult birth and don’t cry. If they don’t make a noise, who is going to open up a bin liner and look to see what is in it? The boxes will make sure the baby is taken care of.”
An incubator has already been set up in Padua, and a second is expected to be put in place in the coming months at the Santo Spirito Hospital near the Vatican. Up to 100 more are planned for the rest of the country.