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An unidentified mother from Madagascar was arrested on Saturday, the 1st of January, on suspicion of abandoning a newborn.
The 20-year-old woman was travelling from Madagascar to Mauritius on an Air Mauritius flight, which landed at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport.
She had arrived in Mauritius on a two-year work permit.
The baby, a boy, was found abandoned in a rubbish bin in one of the plane’s toilets.
The newborn was discovered by airport officers while screening the plane for a routine customs check.
The baby was immediately rushed to the hospital for treatment.
The Malagasy woman had initially denied being the boy’s mother when questioned, but a medical examination proved that she had just given birth.
She was placed under police surveillance at the hospital where she was checked; she remains there now.
While reports of babies being abandoned on planes are rare, FR24 News cites a similar incident happening on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha, Qatar to Sydney, Australia, in October 2020.
Multiple women were pulled from a total of 10 flights and strip-searched in an attempt to find the mother. The director of Amnesty International Australia, Samantha Klintworth, described these actions as “a gross breach of these women’s rights.”
Another situation, this time of an abandoned foetus, occurred on a Fly Safair flight from Durban, South Africa to Johannesburg, South Africa, back in June, 2019.
The “tragic finding”, as described by Fly Safair, speaks to a wider issue regarding access to abortions in South Africa, which is legal within the first 12 weeks but still often denied due to the religious beliefs of medical practitioners.
Regarding the Madagascan woman, authorities say she and her baby are doing fine, though the mother is set to be charged for abandoning her child once she is released from the hospital.