Baby eaten by red ants
Banana peel, crushed cereal boxes, and the occasional piece of rotting meat is what you would expect to find in a rubbish bin – not an abandoned baby clinging on to dear life. The precious newborn, a supposed product of love, should be enclosed in a fuzzy blanky inside warm quarters. No?
Well, this abandoned baby isn’t so lucky. He would not have had a chance at life if he had not been found by workers at the JB Mafora rubbish dump near a black township in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
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Ant infested baby
Red ants were eating the abandoned baby alive! When discovered, the baby was suffering from hypothermia and struggling to breathe. What more, the umbilical cord was still attached to the placenta when paramedics picked up the baby boy.
Dr. Jaco Neser of Bloemfontein Medi-Clinic saved the life of the poor ant-bitten baby while matron Ronel Vrey, with her nursing staff, helped suck all the red ants out of his nose. Inspired by the baby’s will to live, office staff then proceeded to name the black baby Caleb Hope, as the ants nearly suffocated him.
Spokeperson Amanda Appelgryn of Bloemfontein Medi-Clinic said: “He was on antibiotics due to the environment he was found in.” Currently, the baby is in good condition and breathing on his own.
What is the foreseeable future for this abandoned baby? Madelaine Cornelissen, spokesperson for the Shiloh Zoe Hope Trust in Bloemfontein shared: “In the meantime we, in collaboration with the department of social services, would be looking for a place of safety for the boy.”
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Baby bin
So where do some abandoned babies in South Africa go? In a crime-ridden street of downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, lies a baby bin – much like a clothes recycling bin. This unusual bin, outside the Berea Baptist Mission Church, is basically a hatch in the church wall with a ‘Door of Hope’ label on it.
Definitely a better alternative to the abomination of dumping babies in rubbish bins, wouldn’t you say? At any time — desperate women, or should we say monstrous moms — can leave the babies they don’t want or cannot handle here at this place of hope. About 16 babies are dumped here each month.
Cheryl Allen, the church pastor, started this program when she realized that baby abandonment is a common occurrence in South Africa. Newborns were left to die in toilets, fields out in the bush and tossed onto highways to be the next road-kill.
So there is hope, yet.
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Source:
Why South Africa braced an unwanted baby boom.