No improvement in rate of Romanian babies abandoned at birth, UN report finds

Underscoring the importance of new child rights legislation that entered into force this month in Romania, a United Nations-backed report has found that babies are just as likely to be abandoned in the country’s maternity and paediatric hospitals as they were three decades ago.

Around 4,000 newborn babies were abandoned in Romanian maternity hospitals immediately after delivery in 2004 – 1.8 per cent of all newborns – according to the survey supported by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Ministry of Health and carried out in over 150 medical institutions.

“Unfortunately, young mothers going into hospitals are confronted with conservative attitudes and practices,” UNICEF Representative in Romania Pierre Poupard said. “The system remains very traditional and penalizes the poor and marginalized.”

The report, The Situation of Child Abandonment in Romania, finds that many of the mothers who abandon their children are very young, poorly educated and living in extreme poverty. The percentage of abandoned babies who are born underweight (34 per cent) is four times higher than the norm for Romania (8.5 per cent).

The study calls for the development of appropriate indicators and effective monitoring and evaluation measures to ensure steady improvements in the quality of basic services for children and families – a bulwark against child abandonment.

The new legislation promotes a holistic approach to child protection, with responsibilities shared across sectors such as health, education and social welfare and integrated services within communities.