Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A new­born ba­by girl, who was found aban­doned in a card­board box in South Oropouche with her um­bil­i­cal cord still at­tached, re­mained un­der ob­ser­va­tion in hos­pi­tal last night and was re­port­ed to be in good health.

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer con­firmed that the in­fant was in State care at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal while in­ves­ti­ga­tors worked to con­firm the iden­ti­ty of her moth­er, whom they be­lieve is Venezue­lan.

Po­lice have not dis­closed how long the ba­by was left in the box or what cir­cum­stances led to her aban­don­ment in the area where she was dis­cov­ered.

Of­fi­cers were alert­ed to the in­fant af­ter a 23-year-old Venezue­lan woman and a Trinida­di­an man took the child to the Oropouche Po­lice Sta­tion on Thurs­day.

The woman, who lives in the com­mu­ni­ty, told po­lice that at about 12.15 pm she was walk­ing along St Mary’s Road, near the South Oropouche Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, when she heard a ba­by cry­ing.

She no­ticed a card­board box on the side of the road con­tain­ing a black plas­tic bag. When she looked in­side the bag, she dis­cov­ered the ba­by girl with her um­bil­i­cal cord still at­tached.

The woman said she took the in­fant to the home of a 47-year-old res­i­dent, who ac­com­pa­nied her to the po­lice sta­tion.

At the sta­tion, of­fi­cers cleaned and di­a­pered the ba­by be­fore tak­ing her to the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal for a med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion. Doc­tors who treat­ed the in­fant be­lieve it was no more than three to four days old.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty was sub­se­quent­ly no­ti­fied.

Speak­ing about the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, child psy­chol­o­gist Dr Sarah Sub­han said there may be many con­tribut­ing fac­tors be­hind the aban­don­ment, not­ing that child­birth can have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on a woman’s men­tal and phys­i­cal well-be­ing.

“There may be high lev­els of dis­tress and pos­si­bly low lev­els of so­cial sup­port for the moth­er. Oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions are fear, iso­la­tion, men­tal health is­sues, vi­o­lence and trau­ma. The um­bil­i­cal cord still be­ing at­tached sug­gests that both moth­er and ba­by were not at­tend­ed to med­ical­ly,” she ex­plained.

Sub­han said con­cerns about the moth­er’s safe­ty and her abil­i­ty to ac­cess sup­port were al­so crit­i­cal.

She added that aban­don­ing a child is trau­mat­ic not on­ly for the par­ent but can al­so have long-term im­pli­ca­tions for the child’s de­vel­op­ment.

“The child would have been born in cir­cum­stances of high stress lev­els with their ba­sic needs be­ing un­met. This has long-term con­se­quences for the child.”

Sub­han sug­gest­ed that so­ci­ety should con­sid­er in­creas­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness about the sup­port ser­vices and op­tions avail­able to moth­ers who, for what­ev­er rea­son, may be un­able to care for or keep their ba­bies.

In a re­lease is­sued last evening, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go ac­knowl­edged that many par­ents and care­givers face dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances and urged peo­ple to seek help rather than aban­don their chil­dren.

The Au­thor­i­ty re­mind­ed the pub­lic that child pro­tec­tion is every­body’s busi­ness and en­cour­aged any­one who feels un­able to safe­ly care for a child to con­tact the or­gan­i­sa­tion to dis­cuss avail­able op­tions for the child’s care.

It said its Emer­gency Re­sponse Team had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent, as is cus­tom­ary in such cas­es.

The Au­thor­i­ty al­so ap­pealed to any­one with in­for­ma­tion about the child’s iden­ti­ty or cir­cum­stances to con­tact its hot­line at 996 or the po­lice at 999.

At­tempts to reach So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.