On Saturday night, a newborn boy was left in a babybox in Blansko. The boy, named Jan after one of the project’s donors, is the 200th child rescued since the introduction of babyboxes in the Czech Republic. According to Ludvík Hess, the pioneer of the scheme in the country, Jan is healthy. Photo: For illustrative purposes / stock photo, Freepik.
Czech Rep., Jan 6 (BD) – “Jan was placed in the box on January 4th, 2020, at 21:19. The ambulance took him to the hospital in Boskovice,” said Hess in a statement on Saturday. As a joke quiz, he added: “So if there are now 111 girls, how many boys are there?”
The boy was named Jan Juchelka, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Komerční banka a. s. The bank’s charitable wing, JISTOTA, is the largest donor to the Babybox association, according to Hess.
A babybox is a location where people can bring babies and leave them anonymously with certainty that the baby is in a safe place and will be found and cared for. A babybox basically works as a newborn incubator; when a baby is placed in the device, the heating and ventilation systems switch on and, with a slight delay, an alarm alerts medical staff that the baby is there.
The Ministry of Health has registered the babybox as a medical device. The first Czech babybox was opened on International Children’s Day on June 1st, 2005, at Hloubětín Castle, at the headquarters of the private GynCentrum clinic. Today, there are 76 babyboxes across the country. The Babybox in Blansko has been there since 2018.
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