About 200 children were saved thanks to the work of baby boxes in medical institutions in Russian regions. This was stated by Oksana Pushkina, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, RIA Novosti reports.
“It all started on the initiative of doctors and it resulted in the fact that next year these children go to school. And we cannot ignore these cases,”she said, adding that 200 children are seven grades of high school.
Pushkina did not specify for what years she cites figures. Presumably, we are talking about the period from 2011, when the first boxes were installed in Russia, to the present.
Ksenia Mishonova, Ombudsman for the Rights of the Child in the Moscow Region, noted that over six years, baby boxes have saved 45 newborns in Lyubertsy near Moscow. According to her, at one time this city was chosen because in 2013 several abandoned babies were found there in garbage dumps or construction sites. After the installation of the boxes in Lyubertsy, there was not a single such case. In 2019, no children were left there at all.
In September 2016, Senator Elena Mizulina announced that the government had supported her bill to ban baby boxes. Later, the document was returned to her for revision, the continuation of the story did not follow.
A baby box is a specially equipped place with a cradle, where a mother who decides to abandon her child can leave him anonymously. They can be found in the Moscow, Vladimir and Kaliningrad regions, Krasnodar and Kamchatka regions.