LIMA, OH (WLIO) - Surrendering a baby isn't an easy choice, but Mercy Health-St. Rita's wants to ensure it can be done safely.
This month, the hospital installed a Safe Haven Baby Box on their campus. When a mother has no option but to surrender her infant, she can leave it in the box and a silent alarm will be triggered. The box is temperature controlled, and Mercy Health campus police will retrieve the baby in less than a minute. Sarah Bassitt completed a study showing that the Lima population has risk factors that might lead a woman to circumstances where she feels she has to give her baby up, such as the number of residents that are living below the poverty line or are undereducated. After the child is surrendered, the hospital has procedures in place to care for it.
"Once that baby is placed in that baby box and campus police obtain that baby, what it does is it gets checked out in the emergency room making sure that baby didn't have any signs of abuse and there's nothing medically wrong with that baby. Then it gets placed in our special care nursery and we take care of that baby until it's either adopted or placed into a foster home," explained Sarah Bassitt, RN and nursing professor at ONU.
This is the eighth Safe Haven Baby Box to be installed in Ohio. It is located outside Mercy Health St. Rita's next to the ambulance bay, facing Market Street.
