Firefighters in eastern China have rescued an abandoned newborn baby boy lodged in a sewage pipe.
The infant was stuck in a pipe directly beneath a toilet commode, state television reported, in a case which has sparked anger on social media sites.
There are frequent reports in Chinese media of babies being abandoned, often shortly after birth.
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Fight for survival: The newborn baby was rescued by firefighters after being flushed down a toilet from the fourth floor. Firefighters were able to hear faint cries and, exploring further, spotted a baby’s foot deep inside the pipe
Unbelievably, the baby survived the ordeal, which saw him having to be cut out of a pipe
Firefighters received a call from a landlady of a block of flats saying that she thought a baby was trapped in a toilet pipe in the building as she had heard it crying
The problem is 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.In the latest case the infant was found in the sewage pipe in a residential building in Jinhua in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang on Saturday afternoon.
The harrowing discovery came after residents reported the sound of a baby crying, state television said late on Monday.
The pipe was just four inches wide in diameter the China Daily newspaper said, according to the BBC.
Firefighters had to remove the pipe and take it to a nearby hospital, where doctors carefully cut around it to rescue the baby boy inside, the report said.
Read more: Daily Mail
