Baby found in plane bin

MANILA, Philippines - Aircraft cleaners found a healthy newborn boy with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, inside a toilet trashcan of a Gulf Air plane that landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport yesterday.

Gulf Air flight GF 154 from Bahrain arrived around 11: 18 a.m. with more than a hundred passengers on board and was parked at bay 14 of the airport when cleaners found the baby.

Jemon Deita, an aircraft cleaner, said that after the passengers disembarked, the cleaners were allowed to enter the plane and he even took out a black garbage bag from the toilet’s trashcan.

“I was amazed why all of a sudden my black plastic bag became heavy to carry despite some used tissue paper coming from the lavatory trash can only,” Deita said.

He immediately brought down the plastic bag onto the tarmac without knowing that there was a baby inside.

Tristan Dimaano, a security guard of Philippine Airport Ground Services (PAGS) who was at the tarmac when the plastic bag was left by airport cleaners, noticed that there were bloodstains in the trash and saw a baby wrapped with tissue paper.

Dimaano immediately called the attention of Gulf Air official Noel Franco about the newborn baby that they thought was already dead. “Akala namin patay na,” he said.

The two immediately brought the baby to the NAIA ramp clinic without knowing the situation of the infant.

Doctors Caridad Nuas, Ma. Theresa Azores, Solomon Umandap and midwife Mannet Gatchalian immediately attended to the baby and after a thorough examination they declared the boy in “good condition.”

They named the boy George Francis after the code used for Gulf Air airplanes, GF.

The baby, weighing 3 kilos or more than six pounds, was turned over to Ma. Lanie Tabios of the Department of Social Workers and Development (DSWD).

The child was later brought to the Reception and Study Center for children in Quezon City yesterday afternoon.

Airport police from the intelligence and investigation division said the mother of the baby could be a returning Filipino overseas worker who wanted to hide her baby from her relatives in the country.

Pictures taken by airport photographers showed the baby swathed in a towel while doctors warmed him up under a light bulb.

Airport officials said efforts to locate his parents would be left to social welfare officials.

Officials from Gulf Air office in Manila were not immediately available.