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Baby bank

HAMBURG (Germany): Social workers in the German city of Hamburg have opened a controversial "baby bank" to allow despairing mothers to post unwanted infants through a letterbox day and night.

The scheme, opened close to the notorious "Reeperbahn" red light district, is a bid to halt a spate of abandoned newborns in the port city but has been attacked as making it too easy for women to duck their responsibility as mothers.

Under complete anonymity, a mother can pass a child through a secure letter-box into a crib within the social centre that is backing the scheme. An alarm is set off to assure the child is attended to within 10 minutes.

"Every baby whose life we save justifies our work," she said, adding the mother had eight weeks to return and collect the baby before adoption was considered.

The scheme is not wholly original. In 1709, a rich Dutch philanthropist offered a similar service, also in Hamburg. That scheme had to be closed after a year as people started bringing in increasingly older children.-Reuters