Thailand. Babies Being Left to Die a Sad and Lonely Death.

I have been reading the papers and lately there have been a lot more reports of infants being abandoned all over Thailand. I know that this is a problem as I have read about it before but is hardly ever written about in the newspapers. The last report that I wrote about was the illegal abortion clinics dumping fetuses in canals in Bangkok.

Well now there have been 2 reports on babies being abandoned. The first case sounds very disturbing and that the girl has plenty of problems and really needs some help.

The young girl had obviously given birth at or near a petrol station and was seen to be very upset and she was attempting to out the newborn baby into a refuse bin. Thankfully she was stopped and police came and took the baby and mother to a hospital and both are okay and not hurt. The mother has refused to speak to police and now the lighter side of a sad story. The police said they believe the baby is unwanted by the Mother. Aren’t we so lucky we have these brilliant criminally minded people protecting us here in Thailand? I thought that she was putting the baby to bed and going to and get something to eat or something, lucky I wasn’t investigating the case. Baby in bin.
Bin baby

The second case a man was inside his house and heard a baby crying. He went outside and in the back tray of his truck was a baby. This baby was around 5 days old and thankfully wrapped in cloth and a blanket. The man called his neighbour who has a baby and she took care of him/her until police arrived. I am so happy and grateful that even though this person didn’t want their child they didn’t leave it to just die like so many Thai people are doing. baby left safe.

I then read this story that was of real concern to me. Not that it effects me in anyway it’s just very sad and heartbreaking. It reported about a mass funeral for 47 babies and coffins were lined up at a temple for a cremation ceremony to be held quietly.

These scenes are becoming common and mortality rates in infants have skyrocketed. Most of the babies are victims of severe physical disorders and diseases from unhealthy pregnancies.
Official figures say that 55 young babies die each day or around 20,000 a year. This is the official numbers so obviously they would have to be a lot higher then.

The recent figures were unveiled by the Public Health Ministry during the funeral service for the babies to mark the end of their short lives at the temple opposite the Rajavithi Hospital. All of the young infants died at Rajavithi.

Some babies were from unwanted teen pregnancies and were born unhealthy and most babies die after being born grossly underweight, weighing less than 2,500 grammes, a standard set by the World Health Organisation.

This is usually caused by the poor health of their mothers, which stunts the development of vital organs in their unborn child. This also causes premature births as well.

Thailand’s infant mortality rate is worryingly high when compared to other countries. According to the ministry:

The rate in neighbouring Malaysia is seven in every thousand, eight in the United States and only three in every thousand in Japan.

As many as 23 in every 1,000 babies in Thailand dies within a year of being born. Doesn’t sound a lot but it is too many if you ask me.

One sad father on a dead infant said ''I wish she would come back to be my daughter again,'' she died after only 2 days of being born. His daughter died of breathing difficulties due to her bowel breaking open the diaphragm, a layer that sits between the lungs and the stomach.
The funerals were sponsored by doctors and medical staff at Rajavithi Hospital and nearby medical institutes.

Wat Apaitayaram donated the coffins while other people, who learned of the event, contributed money to the touching ceremony.

The hospital now holds funerals for up to 50 babies at a time every four months.

This is a very sad story but what can be done. There are many young Thai people engaging in sexual intercourse very early on in life. Many Thai people think its taboo and don’t talk about it with their young children. If a young daughter especially was to become pregnant at a young she would bring a lot of shame and loss of face to her family and would be treated very harshly by her parents usually.

Having a baby outside of wedlock here in Isaan is a very big No, no. This is why so many young Thai girls who get pregnant run away from their home as facing their parents and the shame brought to the family is too much for them to bore.

This is exactly what a girl did from Noot’s village. She was 19 though and she was promiscuous and was always here and there with different guys. One day she was gone and no one even her friends knew where she went. Some thought the she had run away as she had got pregnant but wouldn’t say that out loud and others were worried about the old married policeman she had been fooling around with and that something might have gone wrong.

Anyway after 6-7 months she finally rang her parents and then rang Noot one day and told her that she was pregnant and the saddest thing is that she is saying she doesn’t know who the father is. She ran away because she was petrified of her dad and what would be said when people found out, so the most sensible thing to her was to run away and face it later.

Sadly many don’t do this and they get abortions which I believe are a good idea and should be legalized here in Thailand and this would make so many backyard abortion butchers disappear who cruelly euthanize babies and some of the terrible reports and endless lists of injuries to young mothers from these unqualified people. Legalize it and bring it out in the open, I don’t see how Thai Buddhists could object to it even though they are against killing anything as part of 8 precepts of being a great Buddhists. Especially when you think of all the murders and rapes and drunkenness and so forth that is a problem throughout Thailand. That’s just my opinion.

Parents need to come into line with the 21st century here in Thailand and stop saying “when I was young”. Even when I was young things were so different then and that wasn’t a really long time ago I am only 35 years old. If the keep scaring the young kids with stories and threats of what will happen if they got pregnant then nothing will change and is only going to get worse with time.

It’s not as easy as give them condoms and tell them about the birds and the bees. The young generation needs to be educated on what young teen pregnancies can do to their lives. The massive effects it will have on their futures, the strain it will put onto their finances and so forth. I am happy to say that my school gave a talk the other day to kids in M2-M5 or 12-17 year old teens I suppose. The bad thing is it lasted only around an hour or just over and isn’t part of the curriculum I think. In schools in Australia they run courses on sex education and also use those horrible fake babies that cry and need to be feed and pee and themselves. I have read students reports when they have done this course and how much they hated the responsibility and strain that was pout on them by having to care for a baby 24/7. Would this work in Thailand? I don’t think so, but you never know.

So what I believe needs to be done is first parents have to change their attitudes, schools need to run more in depth sex education courses, The government needs to spend more money on research and education for the public school system which it funds. That’s just the needle in the haystack.

One other thing the government really needs to change is the disgraceful rape law for minors under the age of 16. Any minor that is raped; the offender can have all the charges dropped against him if he marries the girl. Usually this will involve the parents agreeing to an amount of money and then one of the fake Village weddings that aren’t worth the toilet paper in the toilet is done and the family is happy as it has money and the girl is left physiologically damaged for the rest of her life. This mainly happens with very poor families and there are plenty of them living on the edge of existence here in Thailand. This ridiculous law needs to be stamped out of existence.

A bus driver who raped a 14 year old girl a few months ago pleaded to the parents to let him marry her but really what sort of security could he offer them he was a bus driver making a minimum wage and I am sure he wouldn’t have had a lot of money to offer as a form of compensation. The parents said no to him and the law will deal with him and hopefully he gets a long time behind bars.

Well that’s off my chest. I feel better now.

Brunty