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Srinagar, Sept. 20: A newborn girl with a cleft lip and palate has been abandoned in a local hospital here, triggering a torrent of outrage on Facebook, but few have come forward to help.
Doctors at Srinagar’s G.P. Pant Hospital, the only government hospital for children, said the baby was left behind in the hospital’s corridor last week by some unknown people.
Hospital superintendent Muneer Masoodi said the parents appear to have abandoned the child because of the deformity.
Salim Khan, the deputy superintendent at the hospital who has launched a Facebook campaign to seek help for the child, said she is healthy and is being fed through a tube.
Khan said the deformity “is 100 per cent treatable”. “It will take five to six surgeries to treat her and the process will take some time. The only thing is that we will have to wait for three months to start the surgeries,” he said.
A source at the hospital said the baby is a few weeks old and was not born there.
“We found her wrapped in a blanket in the corridor. We are trying to find out who her parents are but we haven’t had any success so far. An FIR has been lodged in the concerned police station,” a source said.
Deputy medical superintendent Khan said the hospital management has made fervent calls for her adoption but nobody came forward during the first few days, prompting him to launch the campaign on the social networking site.
“We have more than 5000 NGOs working here, but when it comes to act practically everybody washes hands of... Would she survive with such callous attitude of ours???” he posted on the Facebook page.
But while many have expressed concern for the child, even calling for punishment for the parents, few appear willing to help.
Khan said some people have started enquiring about her since yesterday.
“We are expecting a couple of families to see her. Let us see whether any of them will adopt her,” he said.
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