KABUL - A mother has abandoned her four-year-old baby girl in the Indira Gandhi Children’s hospital in Kabul and disappeared without a trace since two days, doctors said on Wednesday.
According to the doctors, the mother of the paralyzed child has left her in the hospital after founding that she is not curable.
The doctors are calling the baby girl as Muska, a Muslim girl name which means smile in Urdu language.
Hospital sources said that Muska’s mother left her in the corridor of the hospital while pretending that she is buying some medicines from an outside pharmacy.
Doctors said that several similar incidents have taken place in the hospital.
“We have a conservative society, most of [the women] who give birth to a child as a result of illegitimate relationship or if the family have a poor economy and can’t look after their child, they leave their children in the hospital,” said Ali Panah, an official in the Indira Gandhi hospital.
Najib Azizi, another doctor in the hospital said that this is the third incident happening in the hospital.
“We took a similar child under treatment for a long-time. No one came to the hospital to take the child. Finally, we took the child to the orphanage,” he said.
“How can a mother abandon such a poor child in the hospital? What type of a human being you are?” criticized a staff member of the hospital.
Afghanistan is one of the three countries in the world where the polio virus is still endemic, in addition to Pakistan and Nigeria. According to the World Health Organization, this year at least 16 children have contracted the disease that destroys the cells of the central nervous system, causing paralysis. (ATN)