Thousands of Children Orphaned or Abandoned in Romania
DAN PETREANU , Associated Press
Oct. 7, 1990 11:42 AM ET
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) _ Stan Barbu is 3 and runs on his knees because the parents who abandoned him will not let surgeons fix his twisted legs. The 50 other children in the orphanage are blind, retarded or maimed.
They are the dregs of tens of thousands of abandoned or orphaned children who owe their plight to Nicolae Ceausescu's obsession with population growth.
Ten months after the Commuist dictator was overthrown and executed, no one knows just how many children languish in Romania's 78 orphanages and in dozens of hospitals. The government says there may be 60,000 in a total population of 23 million, but other estimates range up to 100,000.
What to do with them has yet to be decided. Some foreigners believe adoption is part of the answer.
Stan is pale and fair-haired, with a broad grin and bright eyes that make his crippling infirmities difficult to believe.
His fingers and toes are grown together and his legs bend inward in arcs so severe that he must walk and run on his knees. He delights in showing visitors what he can do.
Although Stan's parents abandoned him two years ago, Romanian law gives them the right to say whether he should have surgery. They have refused, and ''there's nothing we can do but watch him suffer'' unless the law is changed, one of his nurses said.
Ceausescu, put to death last Christmas Day, did not permit contraception and abortion was illegal, with few exceptions. Women were required to have regular medical examinations to determine whether they were pregnant.
Couples were encouraged to have at least four children each, but Ceausescu's economic policies made it difficult to afford more than one.
Parents abandoned tens of thousands of children to state institutions. Dr. Emil Tomescu, deputy health minister, estimates no more than 3 percent of the children in orphanages actually are orphans.
Of the approximately 800 Romanian children diagnosed this year as having AIDS, most are abandoned. Doctors said the fatal disease was spread among them through transfusions of infected blood given before Romania had blood- screening equipment.
Tomescu said he expected legalized abortion, new family planning centers and an improved economy to help ease the problem of abandoned children and orphans.
Dr. Marghareta Creteanu, director of Stan's ward at the St. Catherine Home for Children in Bucharest, said the institution had admitted only 120 children since January, about half the number of the same period in 1989.
Barry Child of Orphanages Trust, a British organization that aids Romania, said his organization plans to buy some houses and put two to four children in each, along with subsidized house parents helped by British volunteers.
''This way, fewer would have to live in orphanages'' and fewer might go to orphanages, where he said ''conditions are absolutely terrible.''
Child said the most serious problem in orphanages was understaffing, ''so we first want to provide groups . . . to teach the Romanian staff what to do to take good care of the children.''
Liz Brown, team leader of four young Scottish nurses working as Orphanages Trust volunteers, said: ''A head nurse won't just jump in and help . . . as we would in other countries, and this exacerbates the problem.''
The deputy health minister, Tomescu, said the government recognized the problem and had decided to increase the nurse-child ratio from 1 to 23 to 1 nurse for each 10 children.
Mariana Gheorghiu, a nurse at the Bucharest home, said the new policy had not yet taken affect and ''things haven't really changed much, despite the efforts of some dedicated people who came here to help.''
''We have more milk and meat, but there is a grave crisis in terms of personnel . . . too many kids, too few nurses,'' she said. As she spoke, Ms. Gheorghiu changed the diaper of Gabriela, who was 9 months old and dying of pneumonia.
St. Catherine's is known as one of the best children's homes in Romania. Conditions there are poorer than in the West, but far better than at other Romanian orphanages.
David Livianu, director of the American Center for Romanian Adoptable Children, said adoption is ''their only way out of a lifetime of struggle and indignity.''
He took the photographs of 16 children with him to the United States in August, and said adoptive parents awaited them in the United States. Livianu recently established an adoption center and his organization also has offices in the Health Ministry.
''It can cost people up to $15,000 to come here, stay in Romania for months and pay middlemen and lawyers en route to adopting a child,'' he said. ''We want to . . . encourage people to instead make donations, which can be used to buy much-needed biomedical equipment such as incubators.''
Adoption was simplified in August by repeal of a law that required presidential approval of all adoptions. Under the new law, adoptions are handled by local courts and need only the approval of child-care specialists and the child's parents, if they are alive.
Dan Koch, 36, the first American to adopt under the new law, said he ''encountered very little'' bureaucratic delay or corruption.
''I believe it would have taken longer and been more complicated . . . back home,'' said Koch, who works for the Delaware state insurance commission.
He returned to his wife, Kathleen, with 3-year-old Ioan, now named John Nicholas.