It was a heart-wrenching moment: a newborn baby girl was rescued after having been found abandoned in a pile of floating trash off a central Philippine island.
A stray dog proved to be more than just a new-born baby’s best friend when it found and rescued the newborn after from floating trash off Lapu-Lapu City in central Philippines.
Rescuers found the baby girl, believed to be just a few hours old, with the umbilical cord and placenta still intact, according to a local media.
The stray reportedly saw the hapless infant on top of a trash heap on the shores of Sitio Camansi, Barangay (village) Pajo in Lapu-Lapu City, at 1.30pm on Thursday, according to Cebu-based SunStar Cebu daily.
Lapu-Lapu City, on the Mactan Island (where Cebu International Airport is located), is about 18km from Metro Cebu, the Philippines’ second-biggest city, in the central Visayan island group.
Vilma Toring, head of the Camansi neighbourhood group, first saw the dog pulling a white cloth from under the stilt houses at 1:30 pm on Thursday.
Then Toring heard the baby cry. Upon closer inspection, she found the baby covered with dirt, but was otherwise alive and healthy.
The paper reported that Pajo Barangay Captain (village chief) Junard Chan went around the area to check with residents of the sea-side village in order to find the parents who abandoned the infant, believed to have been born at dawn on February 22, Thursday.
Staff of the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation took care of the infant and brought her to the Lapu-Lapu City Hospital, where doctors later checked the baby.
