Elements of the Tiko Gendarmerie are currently combing the LongStreet neighbourhood in Tiko, Fako Division, Southwest Region for a criminal nursing mother who has abandoned her newborn.
News Upfront gathered from sources in Tiko that the investigation was open soon after a newborn was found dead at a refuge site.
An inhabitant of the Tiko neighborhood found the lifeless neonate near a garbage site with its placenta yet unattached last rainy Tuesday morning.
Another witness told News Upfront that garbage heaps prevented the baby from being carried away by runoff water as a result of the heavy downpour the night before.
Image Credit: PSTv
Inhabitants of the neighbourhood led by the Quarter Head, whose name we could not get, have buried the baby after preliminary investigations by gendarme officials.
Cases of baby abandonment are on the rise in Cameroon’s Southwest region since 2018. In an interview granted to Chariot Radio in 2018, an official of the Buea Regional Hospital confirmed that “Baby abandonment in hospitals and public places, or even baby theft are acts of moral decadence.
Sundry have linked this rise to the increased unwanted and teenage pregnancies blamed on the Anglophone Crisis that has had as fallout, the lockdown of most schools in the Tiko Municipality and the Southwest Region at large.
By Macwalter Njapteh
