SHENZHENERS may still remember a newborn who made local media headlines early this year when she was found abandoned in the cold on a footbridge in Bao’an District.

The baby girl was dying when she was found by a street cleaner in a cardboard box on the footbridge over Cuigang Road West in Fuyong Subdistrict on Jan. 25, just 10 days ahead of the Spring Festival.

It was reported yesterday that the baby girl had been abandoned by her parents as they couldn’t afford the colossal medical bills to treat her rare heart diseases. “A note left in the cardboard box with the baby said that the parents had no other option but to leave the girl on the street, hoping some good Samaritan would raise her,” said Xie Tian, a police officer with Fuyong Police Station who was called to the scene by the street cleaner.

Xie immediately drove the baby to Bao’an District Maternal and Child Health-care Hospital with his colleague after arriving at the scene. “She looked bluish and pale, and seemed to have difficulty breathing,” Xie said.

A further checkup on the baby shocked the medical workers at the hospital. “The baby was literally dying when she arrived at the hospital. We thought she was just suffering from the cold,” said Zhao Guancong, a pediatrician with the hospital. In fact, the baby girl, who wasn’t identified, was suffering from rare heart conditions, and had underdeveloped lungs and a deformed heart. “The baby would have died at any moment without an immediate surgery,” said Liu Zigang, deputy director of the pediatrics department, adding that what complicated things even more was that her heart was on the right side of her body.

A surgery for the baby was planned by the doctors and Zhou Gengxu, a pediatric expert from Beijing Baiyi Children’s Hospital who was introduced to the Bao’an hospital under the city’s Sanming Project.

The girl’s parents, who were later located by police officers and detained for 20 days for abandoning the child, signed off on the surgery after being contacted by the hospital’s doctors.

“We had taken our daughter to a Guangzhou hospital to seek treatment and the doctors there told us that her survival rate was dim as she suffered from complicated and rare heart conditions,” said Wu Feng, the baby girl’s father. “They told us that it would cost us up to 1 million yuan (US$148,856) to pay for her treatment. They said that even if a surgery were successful, she would still suffer from other complications.”

Wu and his wife have two older children. He is the only breadwinner for the family, as his wife is a stay-at-home mother. “I earn only 4,000 yuan a month. I can’t afford the astronomical medical bills for my little daughter,” Wu said.

He said what made the couple finally give up on their daughter was that the Guangzhou doctors weren’t sure of how long the girl could live even if she had a successful surgery or if she could live a normal life like everybody else provided that the family could afford the expensive treatment.

“I have no idea how I got home after abandoning my daughter on the footbridge that morning. No parents in the world are so hard-hearted that they would abandon their own children,” the father said.

The baby survived an eight-hour surgery Feb. 16 and the next 48 hours in the NICU were very crucial to her survival, according to Zhang Lian, director of the NICU department. Doctors and nurses with the NICU helped the girl battle through a lung infection and kidney failures among other conditions after the surgery.

The baby girl recovered after a month of treatment at the hospital and went home with her parents March 16. Her medical bills of more than 280,000 yuan were covered by a local foundation for seriously ill infants. (SD News)