Counting the losses

About 300 children are found abandoned every month, but this figure does not include children who have died.

In Gauteng, two out of every three abandoned babies, are found dead.

A Medical Research Council study on child homicide using 2009 data estimated 454 children under the age of 5 were killed. Nearly two-third were infants under 1 and more than half of the deaths were neonates aged 0–6 days old, with abandonment being the most common method of homicide in this latter age group.

Research conducted in 2013 mapped the sites where the bodies of “discarded and potential children” were found across Gauteng, says Nacsa, thought to be the result of late abortions. “The majority of the babies were found to have been born at over 26 weeks in utero and could thus have been viable births.”

Most abandonments are considered “unsafe”. Nacsa says many babies are abandoned very close to places of safety that can help desperate mothers, but they often don’t know that they exist or where to find them.

Foreign birth mothers risk deportation if they try to place a child for adoption.

There were only 1 349 adoptions in 2016/2017

There is a rise in the amount of premature and severely disabled abandoned children.

Source: Nacsa