A COUPLE living in Longhua District was urged by police to take back and raise their 2-month-old child after leaving him outside a hospital in a county in Jiangxi Province on Sept. 28, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

The parents decided to abandon their infant son after they spent most of their savings to treat a congenital disease he was diagnosed with at birth.

Some residents had found the abandoned baby at the entrance of Jintang Hospital in Longnan County of Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, on the afternoon of Sept. 28 and posted the information online.

The news about the poor child soon went viral online and many local residents volunteered to look after the kid at the hospital and some donated money to the infant.

Local police officers in Longnan County later stepped in to investigate the case and concluded that the child had not been born in the county after checking all of the birth records at the local hospitals.

Two days later, some residents helped the police track down information about the infant formula left beside the kid. According to the information, the infant formula had been bought at a store selling baby products in Longhua District, Shenzhen. This clue led the police to Shenzhen for further investigation.

Police in Shenzhen actively cooperated to locate the parents when Longnan county police officers arrived in Shenzhen on Oct. 1, the first day of the National Day holiday.

However, even the joint police force failed to find any information related to the kid at the three public hospitals. The police later expanded their search range and investigated all of the hospitals in Longhua.

Eventually, a nurse from the branch hospital of Longhua People’s Hospital recognized the infant’s photo and said he was one of the patients hospitalized there at the end of September.

Based on records kept by the hospital, the police located the parents and summoned them for investigation.

The parents, known as Lu and Jiang, later admitted to giving up the kid because they could not afford his treatment. The couple made up their mind to abandon the kid in Jiangxi, where Jiang was originally from, and hoped someone would adopt the child.

Since Longnan County is the first county between Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, the couple decided to leave their child there. Jiang left the kid near the road by the hospital with 1,500 yuan (US$218), three cans of infant formula and some baby clothes.

At noon on Oct. 3, the baby was returned to his parents, who were given an administrative punishment. (Zhang Qian)