China says those who dumped dead babies near river will be punished

BEIJING - China's health agency said Thursday that health care workers to discard dead babies will be "harsh treatment" following an investigation into the dumping of several bodies along a river in east China.

A scandal erupted last month when the bodies of 21 babies and fetuses - some with hospital ID tags around their ankles and stuffed at least a yellow bag marked "medical waste" - were found washed ashore on Guangfu River on the outskirts of Jining City of Shandong Province.

The Health Ministry said on its website that hospitals should have dead babies as they would any other body.

"The incident highlighted the gaps in the hospital management, created a negative social influence and gave profound lessons," said Health Ministry report.

The report said the dead babies and fetuses should not be treated as medical wastes, but gave no details on how the local hospitals usually dispose of medical waste.

Calls to the Health Ministry rang unanswered Monday afternoon.

Two employees of the hospital morgue, Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun, were dismissed for their hospital and arrested by police as suspects, the official Xinhua news agency, quoting government spokesman Jining Gong Zhenhua. The families of the babies had paid the couple to dispose of the bodies, but instead of thrown into the River.

In China, most families are allowed to have only one or two children and a traditional preference for sons remains strong and abandonment, abortion and murder of newborn girls is still common in rural areas.

Babies who die from the disease are often abandoned or buried in unmarked graves, not old enough to be considered officially part of the family.