Baby pulled to safety after parents flushed him down the toilet

The will to live is a very strong thing. A
newborn baby boy, who was flushed down the toilet in a public lavatory in China,
remained jammed underneath the commode fro several days until people heard his
cries. Rescued and taken to the hospital - the boy suffered a fracture to the
head but is in stable condition. Moved by his plight, people have flooded the
hospital with diapers, cash donation and offers of adoption.


There
has been a great outpouring of sympathy from the public after the incident.
'There have been three or four groups of visitors delivering baby formula some
of whom have expressed willingness to adopt,' a nurse says.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online): "When the baby arrived here, he was in
critical condition," Nurse Zhang Songhe of the pediatric department of the
Pujiang County People's Hospital in the city of Jinhua in East China said. "We
suspect he has a fracture in the top right section of his skull. But now
everything has been stabilized."

Zhang added that the mother of the baby
has been found and is currently with her child in hospital. "The mother has been
found. She is right now in the hospital. I heard she is a 22 year-old single
woman. I don't know the reason she abandoned the baby."

There has been a
great outpouring of sympathy from the public after the incident. "There have
been three or four groups of visitors delivering baby formula some of whom have
expressed willingness to adopt," Zhang adds.

News of the infant's
predicament became plain after he was heard crying in a section of the pipe
directly beneath a toilet commode. Residents living in a residential building in
Jinhua in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang reported the sound of a baby
crying in the public restroom this past weekend. Firefighters had to remove the
pipe and take it to a nearby hospital where doctors carefully used saws to
rescue the baby boy.

Named "Baby No. 59" from the number of his hospital
incubator - was in a critical condition when he arrived at the hospital with an
apparent fracture to his skull. His condition is now described as
stable.

"We're going to take care of the baby. We are not sure when the
baby can be discharged."

Weighing 6.2 pounds, the infant still had his
placenta attached to his body when he was rescued, reports
said.

Harrowing TV footage of the baby's two-hour-long rescue was
uploaded onto the internet.

The baby was stuck in an L-shaped portion of
the sewage pipe with a diameter of about three inches. Rescuers sawed off a
section of the pipe along a ceiling that apparently was just below the
restroom.

The rescuers then rushed that section of pipe to a hospital,
where firefighters and medics alternately used pliers and saws to rip apart the
pipe and free the baby.

There are frequent reports in Chinese media of
babies being abandoned often shortly after birth, a problem attributed variously
to young mothers unaware they were pregnant, the birth of an unwanted girl in a
society which puts greater value on boys or China's strict family planning
rules.