Russian children left by their HIV-positive mothers are doomed to be social outcasts

Meanwhile, dozens of photographs of happy smiling children grace the walls of the orphanage. Those are the pictures of children who got lucky – they were adopted by foreigners. But foreigners do not adopt all adoptable children. First they study medical records and take advice from their doctors. Adoptive parents make a decision only if there is a real chance of helping a child. In foreign countries, all medical bills including the cost of surgery are at the expense of adoptive parents. In view of yet another international scandal (U.S. adoptive parents accused of mistreating a Russian adoptee), Russian authorities have become more of a hindrance than a help to foreign adoptions. Consequently, the number of foreign citizens seeking to adopt Russian children dropped in half. There are a lot of abandoned infants in Krasnoyarsk hospitals and maternity wards. Medical officials just can not find a proper place for the little patients since state-controlled orphanages are running out of a sleeping space.

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“I get calls everyday, and all the callers want to know whether we have at least one vacant berth,” says Galina Kosmynina. “The lines to the orphanages keep growing longer day in and day out. We just shouldn’t pull the plug on adoptions for foreigners, we should not deprive children of a chance to have a new family. We recently received the pictures of our Sashenka, his new mom and dad sent them to us from abroad. We were glad to see the boy has changed for the better, he looks so handsome and full of life on those pictures. He was barely alive on arrival to our institution. He is a tenth son of a chronic alcoholic mother.

It was definitely a lucky accident for him – a neighbor found him screaming on the floor, wrapped in rags. He was 10 months old but he weighed just 3 kilos like a newborn baby. Needless to say, we nursed him back to health yet he was very weak at the time of adoption.

We were kind of worried for his new adoptive parents – how would they manage to take care of such a problem child? Now they want to adopt another one in our orphanage,” say Kosmynina.

Foreigners adopted 10 infants in the Sosnovoborsk orphanage. All of them were born by HIV-positive mothers. Fortunately, they were found to be free from the virus. Many foreign families give donations to the orphanage. They bring brightly colored toys, clothing and shoes to Sosnovoborsk. There is a constant lack of state funds, and local sponsors are hard to reach. The swaddling clothes, disposable diapers, and rompers are always in short supply. The orphanage also needs new furniture e.g. beds, tables, and dressers.

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