TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Unfolding Stories
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsJapan's baby hatch hospital offers mothers 'last resort'
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
This picture on June 10, 2022 shows staff working in a nursery room at Jikei hospital in Kumamoto. (AFP/Philip Fong)
W
hen the alarm sounds at Jikei hospital in southern Japan, nurses race down a spiral staircase. Their mission: to rescue an infant left in the country's only baby hatch.
For 15 years, the clinic has been the only place in Japan a child can be anonymously and safely abandoned.
The pioneering hospital in the Kumamoto region also offers a 24/7 pregnancy support hotline and the country's only "confidential birth" programme.
These have made it the target of criticism, but head doctor Takeshi Hasuda sees the facility as a vital safety net.
"There are women out there who are ashamed that they did something horrible (by getting pregnant) and are so scared," he told AFP.
"For these women, a place like ours that bars no one and makes them think 'even I will be welcome' counts a lot, I think."
Nurses try to arrive at the hatch, with its stork illustrations and meticulously tended baby bed, within a minute of the alarm sounding.
More from The Weekender
Can we afford the luxury of a good night’s sleep?
From sleep patches to smart apps, we’re now exerting so much effort to attain a basic human need. But the real problem might not be in our beds.
Jakarta’s padel moment
From FOMO to full-blown obsession, padel has captured the city. What comes next may depend less on courts and more on the communities that grow around them.
The battle over memory
And why the government’s plan to rewrite its history books should alarm us all.
