This is a heartbreaking post about beautiful people in a beautiful country that are experiencing devastating cricumstances...but it also poses the question to me of what else can I do as an individual half way around the world. And the answer I came up with...always something.
Why South Africa is Braced for an Unwanted Baby Boom (from here)
Why South Africa is Braced for an Unwanted Baby Boom
-By Rosanna Greenstreet
16 babies a month are dumped through this hatch and it is predicted that the number of abandoned children will rise drastically nine months after the World Cup. Many of them will be born to prostitutes who are unable to support them. Rosanna Greenstreet reports on how the already overstretched South African orphanages are preparing to cope
The Door of Hope in Johannesburg receives around 16 children a month in its ‘baby bin’ (concealed behind the hinged metal door)
Outside the Berea Baptist Mission Church, in one of the most crime-ridden streets in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, there’s a ‘baby bin’. A bit like a clothing recycling bin on a UK high street, it consists of a hatch in the church wall, covered by a metal flap labelled ‘Door of Hope’, where desperate mothers can come, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to leave tiny children they haven’t the money, health or support to care for. Sixteen babies are routinely dumped in the box behind the flap every month (about the same number that are abandoned in the UK in a whole year).
The baby bin was installed in 1999 by the church’s pastor Cheryl Allen, after she realised that newborns were being left by their mothers to die in toilets, rubbish bins, in fields and out in the bush. South Africa is home to the highest number of people living with HIV in the world, and half the population is below the poverty line. The combination of these two factors makes the abandonment of newborns by their mothers a horrifyingly common occurrence. It is estimated that 50 children are dumped each month in Johannesburg alone, and there are even cases of babies in refuse bags being tossed on to highways, to be run over by cars. The Johannesburg baby bin was created as a way for women to at least abandon their children as safely as possible.
Kate Allen, the pastor’s daughter-in-law and director of the church’s three orphanages, explains: ‘There is a weight sensor inside the baby bin. As soon as a mother places her child in the box, a bell rings in our baby home. We go down, unlock the bin, take out the child and welcome it into our family. The babies are often newborn, although some mothers try to look after them for two or three months and then give up. We have taken some as old as two, but most are under a year.’
This August, the ‘Door of Hope’ baby bin will have been in operation for 11 years and taken delivery of 890 children. Kate says: ‘When we first started we received between four and six children a month. That increased to eight, last year it was 12 and, since the beginning of this year, we’ve had 16 children every month.’
Kate attributes the increase in abandoned babies to the economic downturn, which has left one in four South Africans jobless. ‘People are struggling to provide for their families and there is a lot of prostitution. Mothers who are prostitutes will have their babies, abandon them, and then go back to work. It’s horrific. We don’t ever see or hear them, as most children are abandoned at night, but it is not hard to imagine the mother’s agony as she leaves her baby in the bin and runs off.’
And Kate is preparing for an extra-busy baby bin in nine months’ time – because of the World Cup. Football fans from 32 countries are converging on the nine cities where matches are being held. Most of the estimated 450,000 tourists are men and, although sex work is illegal in South Africa, many unwanted babies will inevitably be conceived by women working as prostitutes during the competition.
Orphanages in cities like Johannesburg and Durban are bracing themselves for a deluge of abandoned babies. ‘All we can do is prepare space for them,’ says Kate at the Door of Hope. ‘We are looking into creating a children’s village where we can build cottages, but this won’t be in place for a couple of years. We’ve seen the perfect plot of land, but we need four million rand [about £400,000] to fund it. We are in crisis mode now and battling to find enough space. We’ve just taken out some cupboards in one of our bedrooms to make more room!’
In Durban, artist Lara Mellon, 40, has begun a campaign called Every ONE Counts to raise funds for the city’s Shepherd’s Keep orphanage. She was inspired by a newspaper story in which Shepherd’s Keep founder Colin Pratley talked about the need for an advance strategy to deal with the World Cup problem – in response to which Durban’s city manager Michael Sutcliffe dismissed the issue as unimportant. ‘He said that even if 1,000 sex workers abandoned 1,000 babies, that didn’t warrant an issue to be made of it,’ recalls Lara. ‘I was astounded. Just one abandoned baby is too many.’
Three babies are dumped every 48 hours in KwaZulu-Natal province, where Durban is the largest city. Lara felt compelled to do something for the World Cup babies who are likely to raise that figure. She says: ‘I lay on my bed and imagined a gallery filled with 1,000 paintings, representing the 1,000 babies mentioned in that newspaper article. I sent a mail-out to all my artist friends asking them to contribute work, and the response was overwhelming.’
Artists from around the globe are donating works to the Every ONE Counts campaign and each piece will be sold for 1,000 rand (about £100). ‘So far we’ve had 300 pledges of pictures,’ says Lara. ‘We’ve received 150 of those and 52 have already sold. Primarily the works are sold through Facebook. All sorts of people are buying them, in New York, New Zealand and the UK – including many who wouldn’t normally even visit a gallery.’
Shepherd’s Keep orphanage does not have a baby bin, but its staff work closely with the Durban police, who bring them abandoned babies found in the area. Michelle Potgieter, director of Shepherd’s Keep, says: ‘Today we received a newborn found in a park. Last month, we received a baby who was left deep in the bush – her mother obviously never intended her to be found. The child had peeled from head to foot due to sun exposure and red ants were hanging from every inch of her flesh – they had to be prised off. She had been there for two or three days and couldn’t cry any more, she was absolutely hoarse. Like many of our babies, she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome. She will go to sleep and wake up screaming in terror.’
Most children are abandoned at night. It is not hard to imagine the mother’s agony as she leaves her baby in the bin and runs off’
Michelle has also identified a worrying new trend. She says: ‘We have discovered that lots of babies, found in toilets and in plastic bags, are botched abortions. Despicable people are advertising abortions for women who are as much as seven months pregnant. A mother takes a pill to induce early labour and thinks that she has aborted her foetus, but she hasn’t; she has given birth to a living, breathing baby, tied it up in a plastic bag and left it for dead.’
Others are clearly left in the hope that someone will find and care for them – near a church or hospital, with their belongings neatly packed. ‘A tin of formula left with the child immediately tells you that the mother has HIV,’ says Michelle, ‘because breastfeeding is the tradition here, as it is free. You just know that this mother has had to leave her most precious possession because she’s dying. It’s so sad.’
Shepherd’s Keep looks after the babies from birth to six months. By the time a child is six months old, it is hoped that any necessary medical investigations will be complete and that a social worker will have sourced adoptive parents. These mostly live outside South Africa – in Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. If no suitable parents are found, the children move on to government-run orphanages.
‘We have a huge problem with adoption in this country,’ Michelle explains. ‘There are areas where the HIV infection rate is one in two. This impacts on the nation’s ability to care for its own children. Also, within black culture [the vast majority of abandoned babies are black], men are very reluctant to adopt somebody else’s baby.’
Of the 54 children currently living at the Door of Hope orphanages in Johannesburg (where most children are adopted by the age of six), three are HIV positive. ‘It’s difficult to place HIV-positive children,’ says Kate Allen, ‘so they usually go to special homes. However, next week we have our first HIV-positive adoption! If these children have the correct medication and diet, we expect them to have a full life expectancy.
‘It doesn’t necessarily mean that the child is positive if the mother is,’ she adds. ‘If a baby is only a few days old, we test for the mother’s antibodies in the child’s blood. If we have a positive result, we give the baby Nevirapine (an antiretroviral drug which can suppress the HIV virus if the child is under 72 hours old). When the baby’s blood is tested at three months, there is an 85 per cent chance of it testing negative.’
At Shepherd’s Keep in Durban, Michelle is equally optimistic. ‘Babies arrive in a terrible state,’ she says, ‘but when they leave us, they are the picture of health, even the little ones who are HIV-positive. We make sure the antiretroviral drugs are tailored to them and that their nutritional programme includes additional vitamins to boost their immune system. Obviously they will have to live careful lives, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t live long lives.
In the early days, people would say, ‘You are wasting money on HIV-positive babies because they are going to die anyway.’ And I would reply, ‘You wouldn’t say that if this baby had cancer.’ Lara Mellon’s Every ONE Counts campaign is rightly saying that every baby is worth exactly the same, no matter where they come from.’
Recently, an English lawyer and his wife returned to Durban with two little girls they adopted from Shepherd’s Keep several years ago. Found abandoned separately, the girls were exactly the same age and adopted as twins. Michelle says: ‘It was a joy to see the turn their lives have taken. Now these little girls travel the world, and to hear their English accents, and think of where they came from, is extraordinary.’
Let’s hope the tales of the babies born in the wake of the World Cup have a happy ending too.
Every One Counts, everyonecounts.co.za
Door of Hope, holeinthewall.org.za
Shepherd’s Keep, shepherdskeep.org.zahere
16 babies a month are dumped through this hatch and it is predicted that the number of abandoned children will rise drastically nine months after the World Cup. Many of them will be born to prostitutes who are unable to support them. Rosanna Greenstreet reports on how the already overstretched South African orphanages are preparing to cope
The Door of Hope in Johannesburg receives around 16 children a month in its ‘baby bin’ (concealed behind the hinged metal door)
 |
The baby bin was installed in 1999 by the church’s pastor Cheryl Allen, after she realised that newborns were being left by their mothers to die in toilets, rubbish bins, in fields and out in the bush. South Africa is home to the highest number of people living with HIV in the world, and half the population is below the poverty line. The combination of these two factors makes the abandonment of newborns by their mothers a horrifyingly common occurrence. It is estimated that 50 children are dumped each month in Johannesburg alone, and there are even cases of babies in refuse bags being tossed on to highways, to be run over by cars. The Johannesburg baby bin was created as a way for women to at least abandon their children as safely as possible.
Kate Allen, the pastor’s daughter-in-law and director of the church’s three orphanages, explains: ‘There is a weight sensor inside the baby bin. As soon as a mother places her child in the box, a bell rings in our baby home. We go down, unlock the bin, take out the child and welcome it into our family. The babies are often newborn, although some mothers try to look after them for two or three months and then give up. We have taken some as old as two, but most are under a year.’
This August, the ‘Door of Hope’ baby bin will have been in operation for 11 years and taken delivery of 890 children. Kate says: ‘When we first started we received between four and six children a month. That increased to eight, last year it was 12 and, since the beginning of this year, we’ve had 16 children every month.’
 |
Playtime at Shepherd's Keep orphanage in Durban |
Kate attributes the increase in abandoned babies to the economic downturn, which has left one in four South Africans jobless. ‘People are struggling to provide for their families and there is a lot of prostitution. Mothers who are prostitutes will have their babies, abandon them, and then go back to work. It’s horrific. We don’t ever see or hear them, as most children are abandoned at night, but it is not hard to imagine the mother’s agony as she leaves her baby in the bin and runs off.’
And Kate is preparing for an extra-busy baby bin in nine months’ time – because of the World Cup. Football fans from 32 countries are converging on the nine cities where matches are being held. Most of the estimated 450,000 tourists are men and, although sex work is illegal in South Africa, many unwanted babies will inevitably be conceived by women working as prostitutes during the competition.
Orphanages in cities like Johannesburg and Durban are bracing themselves for a deluge of abandoned babies. ‘All we can do is prepare space for them,’ says Kate at the Door of Hope. ‘We are looking into creating a children’s village where we can build cottages, but this won’t be in place for a couple of years. We’ve seen the perfect plot of land, but we need four million rand [about £400,000] to fund it. We are in crisis mode now and battling to find enough space. We’ve just taken out some cupboards in one of our bedrooms to make more room!’
In Durban, artist Lara Mellon, 40, has begun a campaign called Every ONE Counts to raise funds for the city’s Shepherd’s Keep orphanage. She was inspired by a newspaper story in which Shepherd’s Keep founder Colin Pratley talked about the need for an advance strategy to deal with the World Cup problem – in response to which Durban’s city manager Michael Sutcliffe dismissed the issue as unimportant. ‘He said that even if 1,000 sex workers abandoned 1,000 babies, that didn’t warrant an issue to be made of it,’ recalls Lara. ‘I was astounded. Just one abandoned baby is too many.’
 |
| Inside Shepperd's Keep |
 |
 |
| one of the paintings donated to Lara |
Three babies are dumped every 48 hours in KwaZulu-Natal province, where Durban is the largest city. Lara felt compelled to do something for the World Cup babies who are likely to raise that figure. She says: ‘I lay on my bed and imagined a gallery filled with 1,000 paintings, representing the 1,000 babies mentioned in that newspaper article. I sent a mail-out to all my artist friends asking them to contribute work, and the response was overwhelming.’
Artists from around the globe are donating works to the Every ONE Counts campaign and each piece will be sold for 1,000 rand (about £100). ‘So far we’ve had 300 pledges of pictures,’ says Lara. ‘We’ve received 150 of those and 52 have already sold. Primarily the works are sold through Facebook. All sorts of people are buying them, in New York, New Zealand and the UK – including many who wouldn’t normally even visit a gallery.’
Shepherd’s Keep orphanage does not have a baby bin, but its staff work closely with the Durban police, who bring them abandoned babies found in the area. Michelle Potgieter, director of Shepherd’s Keep, says: ‘Today we received a newborn found in a park. Last month, we received a baby who was left deep in the bush – her mother obviously never intended her to be found. The child had peeled from head to foot due to sun exposure and red ants were hanging from every inch of her flesh – they had to be prised off. She had been there for two or three days and couldn’t cry any more, she was absolutely hoarse. Like many of our babies, she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome. She will go to sleep and wake up screaming in terror.’
Most children are abandoned at night. It is not hard to imagine the mother’s agony as she leaves her baby in the bin and runs off’
Michelle has also identified a worrying new trend. She says: ‘We have discovered that lots of babies, found in toilets and in plastic bags, are botched abortions. Despicable people are advertising abortions for women who are as much as seven months pregnant. A mother takes a pill to induce early labour and thinks that she has aborted her foetus, but she hasn’t; she has given birth to a living, breathing baby, tied it up in a plastic bag and left it for dead.’
Others are clearly left in the hope that someone will find and care for them – near a church or hospital, with their belongings neatly packed. ‘A tin of formula left with the child immediately tells you that the mother has HIV,’ says Michelle, ‘because breastfeeding is the tradition here, as it is free. You just know that this mother has had to leave her most precious possession because she’s dying. It’s so sad.’
Shepherd’s Keep looks after the babies from birth to six months. By the time a child is six months old, it is hoped that any necessary medical investigations will be complete and that a social worker will have sourced adoptive parents. These mostly live outside South Africa – in Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. If no suitable parents are found, the children move on to government-run orphanages.
 |
‘We have a huge problem with adoption in this country,’ Michelle explains. ‘There are areas where the HIV infection rate is one in two. This impacts on the nation’s ability to care for its own children. Also, within black culture [the vast majority of abandoned babies are black], men are very reluctant to adopt somebody else’s baby.’
Of the 54 children currently living at the Door of Hope orphanages in Johannesburg (where most children are adopted by the age of six), three are HIV positive. ‘It’s difficult to place HIV-positive children,’ says Kate Allen, ‘so they usually go to special homes. However, next week we have our first HIV-positive adoption! If these children have the correct medication and diet, we expect them to have a full life expectancy.
‘It doesn’t necessarily mean that the child is positive if the mother is,’ she adds. ‘If a baby is only a few days old, we test for the mother’s antibodies in the child’s blood. If we have a positive result, we give the baby Nevirapine (an antiretroviral drug which can suppress the HIV virus if the child is under 72 hours old). When the baby’s blood is tested at three months, there is an 85 per cent chance of it testing negative.’
At Shepherd’s Keep in Durban, Michelle is equally optimistic. ‘Babies arrive in a terrible state,’ she says, ‘but when they leave us, they are the picture of health, even the little ones who are HIV-positive. We make sure the antiretroviral drugs are tailored to them and that their nutritional programme includes additional vitamins to boost their immune system. Obviously they will have to live careful lives, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t live long lives.
In the early days, people would say, ‘You are wasting money on HIV-positive babies because they are going to die anyway.’ And I would reply, ‘You wouldn’t say that if this baby had cancer.’ Lara Mellon’s Every ONE Counts campaign is rightly saying that every baby is worth exactly the same, no matter where they come from.’
Recently, an English lawyer and his wife returned to Durban with two little girls they adopted from Shepherd’s Keep several years ago. Found abandoned separately, the girls were exactly the same age and adopted as twins. Michelle says: ‘It was a joy to see the turn their lives have taken. Now these little girls travel the world, and to hear their English accents, and think of where they came from, is extraordinary.’
Let’s hope the tales of the babies born in the wake of the World Cup have a happy ending too.
Every One Counts, everyonecounts.co.za
Door of Hope, holeinthewall.org.za
Shepherd’s Keep, shepherdskeep.org.zahere
