Bodies of babies found dumped in Chinese river

• Tania Branigan in Beijing
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 March 2010 13.21 BST
• Article history

Chinese police and health officials are investigating after the bodies of 21 babies and foetuses were dumped in a river. The bodies apparently originated from local hospitals, state media reported today.

A hospital in Jining, north-eastern Shandong province, has suspended several staff after residents found the bodies beneath a bridge.

The deaths are thought to be the result of abortions, induced labour and natural causes.

About eight of the 21 bodies had tags that gave their mother's names and the date of birth, the Beijing News reported. The state news agency Xinhua said the tags also bore the name of Jining Medical University's hospital.

According to China Radio International, three of the babies had been taken to the paediatrics department after falling seriously ill, but died after their treatment failed.

All were very young and some appeared to be foetuses.

The Beijing News quoted insiders who said contractors hired by the hospital to dispose of corpses had probably dumped them in the river.

"The hospital medical staff involved have been suspended from their work during the investigation," Zhong Haitao, a spokesman at the Jining Health Bureau, told Xinhua.

No one at the hospital or police bureau was available for comment.

Last year a hospital in central Hubei province admitted that mortuary staff dumped the unclaimed bodies of two adults and six aborted foetuses at a building site, where they were unearthed by a construction worker.

Tan Xiaodong, of Wuhan University's school of public health, told China Daily that there were no clear regulations on the disposal of unclaimed bodies and new legislation was needed. But he added that most provinces had established their own procedures.

- I am completely disgusted by this article. I am pro choice and support abortion, so I understand that the result of that is fetuses, and obviously nothing can be done about the babies whose medical treatments failed. However, the fact that those bodies were dumped in a river, as if they weren't people at all, is disgusting. It shows no respect for the lives of the babies who died from illness or natural causes, or for their suffering families. These bodies need to be buried or disposed of in a more appropriate way. Even the babies who were aborted should under no circumstances be dumped in a river. They, again, should be disposed of appropriately or used for medical purposes (ex: stem cell research). I'm glad that the hospital staff was suspended, and hopefully now that there has been some press about it, the Chinese government will come up with a more appropriate solution for dealing with the bodies of babies.