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| Sunday, 30 January 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Destiny's child by Chamitha Kuruppu Taking care of infants abandoned by mothers, soon after delivery, is not a strange experience for the staff of Diyatalawa Base Hospital. The hospital staff feed the little 'orphans', look after them and try to treat them with extra care, as these babies are not lucky enough to feel the warmth of a mother. And usually after treating them for a while the hospital hands over the orphans to the Probation and Child Care Services Department. In an all too frequent occurrence, last week too the hospital staff had bid farewell to a lovely baby boy. But things were a bit different this time. For not only was the baby's arrival at the hospital somewhat unusual, so was the departure. For none of the busy hospital staff wanted to see him leave. And when he left, there was not a single dry eye among them. The hospital staff named him little 'Tarzan' because of the circumstances of his discovery in a nearby forest. A group of villagers had entered the forest for hunting, when their dog had started acting weird. Running deep into the forest, the dog had returned to the men, barking continuously, as if to convey an urgent message. After repeating this several times, the dog had gone into the forest and returned after a couple of minutes. And this time it had been dragging a polythene bag with its mouth. And inside the polythene bag was an infant covered with ants. That was destiny's plan to save little 'Tarzan'. This lucky infant was immediately handed over to the Haldemulla Hospital by the villagers. The Haldemulla hospital took measures to direct him to the Diyathalawa Base Hospital. On January 9, around 5 p.m., two personnel from the Haldemulla hospital came to handover the baby, recalls Dr. Akbar of the Paediatrics Unit. "He was a healthy baby and weighed 2.8 kgs. Other than the wounds from ant bites, his health condition was extremely normal. The first thing I noticed about him was his long fingers," says Dr. Akbar. Little Tarzan is fair of complexion, has dark shiny hair, long nails and greets everyone with his wide open sparkling eyes. According to the hospital, he was not more than five days old when he was found. Fortunately he had not been in the jungle for more than 24 hours. If it wasn't for the dog, little Tarzan might have been prey to some wild animal. It was love at first sight for the hospital staff, who did everything possible to take good care of him. They even contributed money to conduct some tests that had to be done privately in order to make sure the baby was in perfect condition. Several mothers in the same ward had volunteered to breast feed him. But like they do for other orphans, the staff had to reject their offer and bottle feed him instead. "Since we are supposed to handover the baby to the Probation and Childcare Services Department we were instructed to bottle feed him," says Sadeepa, a nurse attached to the ward. "He never troubled us and behaved well. If he was not fed on time he would start crying but other than that, he was a good baby," recalls Sadeepa. During his two-week stay at the hospital, Tarzan received endless visitors, some among them even willing to adopt him. After completing the necessary treatments, the time had come to hand him over to the Probation and Childcare Services Department. According to the department, they had already picked a couple to adopt Tarzan. So this lucky baby will not remain an orphan for more than a couple of days. On January 20, the baby was handed over to the Probation and Childcare Services Department amidst many wishes that he didn't have to leave the hospital so soon. " He was a wonderful baby and we have never gotten so close emotionally to an orphan as we did with him," says Sadeepa. |
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