The Gagging of Babies

I was perusing the BBC News European home page today, because it is the only Web site I enjoy that gives me truly international news, and I came across a story about a hospital in Yekaterinburg, Russia that were gagging babies to keep them quiet. There were two stories on this topic. The first was the initial reporting of the incident that happened earlier this month, actually it was caught on someone's camera phone earlier this month. The second story was talking about the plight of orphans and the otkazniki-children abandoned at hospitals by their parents.
The initial story was telling of how this patient at Hospital No. 15 in the city heard muffled crying of babies. When she went to investigate the noise, she found a nursery just down the hall from her where babies had tape over their mouths to keep them quiet. These children were just a few months old. The nurses said they did it because they were making too much noise for them to work. The children were abandoned because the parents could not take care of them for one of several reasons: financial reasons, alcoholism, drug abuse, or they just don't want them.
This tragedy is one that is found all across Russia, the tragedy of abandoning babies at a hospital not the gagging part that truly is horrible. The UNICEF representative for Russia and Belarus said this incident is a first for him, however the problem of otkazniki is one he has been pushing Russian authorities to address, they have remained silent. Maybe with national and international outrage on the abuse at Hospital No 15 they will finally look into this issue. Here's an excerpt from the story:
"Hospital staff are trained to care for the sick - they are not trained to deal with the cognitive and emotional development of babies," he (the UNICEF representative, Carel de Rooy) told the BBC News website.
"This has serious implications both for the development and long-term health of the child."
Given the potential for damage to these babies' make-up, why do they get left in hospital? The answer, Maxim Gareyev explains, is lack of resources.
"We simply do not have enough children's homes in Sverdlovsk [the region around Yekaterinburg] and Russia in general," he says.
"These babies get left in hospitals but there are no funds or trained medical staff or special facilities for caring for them.
"Of course, the hospitals make space for these babies but the problem is that in the first year of life a baby needs to be cuddled, it needs to be talked to, if it is to develop as a human being."
What is the answer for this problem? Well, there obviously needs to be more staffing at hospitals to take care of this and for there to be more orphanages in Sverdlovsk and the whole of Russia. However, that may not be enough. The true answer to this problem is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When the life/heart changing message of the Gospel is presented and people turn 180-degrees to follow Christ and become believers the social problems will begin to disappear. I am not spouting liberation theology, at least that is not my intent, I am saying that in time, how much time I do not know, there is a change in the lives of the believers to where they will not want to abandon babies in the hospital. There is a challenge before believers to take the gospel so incidents like this will not happen, however we are not going like we should. There should be such an outpouring of people wanting to go to all the nations that mission boards will have to turn people away because there is too many applications not because local churches are not giving.
The local church needs to partner with workers overseas and here in the states so that they can minister more effectively in their areas. This partnership should entail praying for the workers, giving to the workers financially, and going to visit the workers and help out when they can. Why do we not take care of the widow and orphans like we should? Throughout the Bible we are told to do so, yet we do not. Why? The early church used to take in babies that were left to the elements so that they would not die. Why does the church of today not do this? Why are we so concerned with internal things and less concerned about external things? Of course I speak of the church here in the West. I wish I had an answer to these questions, but I do not.
If you want to read the stories yourself go to the BBC Web site and look for the story.