Drop-off for ditched babies to open after successful test

JAPAN’S first abandoned baby “hatch”, where mothers can drop off babies they can’t care for, completed a test run yesterday with a doll, clearing the way for the controversial facility to start operating.

Jikei Hospital in the south-western city of Kumamoto, which has links with the Catholic Church, has built an incubator-like hatch with access from the outside of the building to allow babies to be dropped off safely and anonymously.

Staff hope the hatch, nicknamed the “cradle of storks”, will protect the lives of abandoned babies. The system is in use in Germany and a similar facility recently opened in Italy.