A mother of a newborn baby who was taken by Police for questioning on suspicion of intending to abandon her baby says she went to beg some well-wishers to assist her with money to care for the baby.

The 25-year-old Juan Irene delivered her third born baby boy on Monday at around 11:30 pm at Nyakuron Primary Health Care Center in Juba.

According to the health assessment report, the baby and his mother were in a good condition after delivery.

However, Irene left the facility Tuesday morning at around 9am, claiming she was going to freshen up in the washroom.

But hours later, Irene was nowhere to be found, causing panic among the midwives leaving her newborn baby unattended for six hours.

The lactating mother later appeared at 3 pm local time after they reported the matter to the police and was taken for investigations.

She was briefly detained before being reunited with her babe.

Juan Irene who said she was abandoned by her husband told Eye Radio shortly after her release that she went to Sherikat in Gumbo to look for some money.

“I went to request for money from my friend in Sherikaat and she was not around. So I stayed there to wait for her, which is why I delayed. After she came, she gave me the money.”

Jerisha Gabriel Solomon, the in-charge of Nyakuron Primary Health Care Center in Juba said this is the second time they have registered a similar incident at the facility.

“The first incident was a dead body which was abandoned. The woman gave birth to a dead child and she was like going out, she disappeared and it was not a working day like this. I was told that a woman has abandoned a dead child. I took a taxi and came. We were with the police and all security organs after the investigation, they said we can bury the body. So we buried the body of that child with the midwife on duty and our Guard helped us to dig the grave and we buried it within the facility here.”

Recently, cases of abandoning and dumping of newborn babies have reportedly increased in different parts of the country.

Over the weekend, Police in Lakes State arrested a woman who dumped her newly born baby boy in a pit latrine at Rumbek State Hospital.

The child was rescued alive the following morning and was cared for by the Catholic Diocese of Rumbek.

In September last year, Police in the border town of Nimule also arrested a 19-year-old mother for allegedly killing her newborn baby by throwing it into a pit latrine.

The incident happened barely a month after Police in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal announced the arrest of a woman for beheading her baby.