Hospital theft: Baby business

ISLAMABAD:

The easiest thing to steal from any public hospital seems to be a newborn baby. In most cases, mothers innocently hand their babies over to the thieves. The modus operandi of the thieves has been identical and unchanged over years in almost all cases of newborns’ theft. Yet, both police and the health officials have been unable to stop this most hurting of the thefts.

Last Thursday, a newborn was stolen in the similar fashion from the capital’s biggest public hospital, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims). The hospital has a separate Mother and Child Hospital which should be comparatively easy to protect against such crimes. But it is not.



As it happens, the thieves, mostly women, would stay with the mother and the family of the target baby for a night, win their trust and escape with the newborn before the mother even gets up the next morning. It is this simple.

But preventing this from happening is simpler. More than securing the ward where the mothers and the newborns are kept, mothers and their attendants need to be sensitised on the issue. A simple note at the entrance, for instance, warning the mothers and their attendants of the thieves’ modus operandi would do more than half of the job.

The rest can be covered in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) developed by the hospital for a policy on the number of attendants to be allowed with as single patient and the procedure for their registration. Then come the physical security arrangements, including security cameras and guards.

No such SOPs or physical security arrangements were in place at the Pims. The only so-called security measure in place was security guards, who proved completely useless. Police said the guards had no idea as to what had happened.

Why do the hospitals not take such easily executable preventive measures despite repeated incidents of baby theft over the years?

In the recent case of Pims, the police said the possibility of hospital staff’s involvement in the incident could not be ruled out as the investigations were underway. This is true for all hospitals where these incidents take place.

It is a gang of people involving staff from the hospital that operates to deprive people of their babies. A newborn is sold from Rs100, 000 to Rs1 million or more. The woman thief gets the ‘contract’ from a client, an issueless wealthy couple, along with advance payment, and then has to deliver the baby on a particular date.

After briefly carrying out reconnaissance, the thief would select the target baby, bribe one of the hospital staff to get access, and the rest is just a walk in the park. The thieves are also difficult to catch as they do not keep the baby with them for too long.

They ‘deliver’ the children to their clients soon after stealing them from the hospital, and newborns are notoriously difficult to recognise.

The police said that in the recent incident, no footage of any such woman was recorded on the entry or exit security cameras of the main hospital, while there was no such camera installed at the children hospital.

Now, the police have also asked the hospital to devise proper SOPs for prevention of such crimes.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th,2013.