The medical director of Isaac Okwuonu Memorial Hospital, Aba, Abia State, Dr. Chukwuemeka Okwuonu, has tasked the government on measures to curtail the rising cases of illegal adoptions.

Okwuonu said that part of the measure would be to regulate the activities of social homes to ensure that only those that are approved by the government and which activities conform with legitimate standards operate.

“There is glaring cases of illegal adoptions in the society and we cannot run away from the fact that this is strictly attributed to the proliferation of illegal social homes that cut corners in their activities.

“If government is sincere in checking this trend, it must scale up actions to ensure that the social homes which undertake the activities of child adoption are duly registered and conform to legitimate standards,” Okwuonu said.

He said that what informed the establishment of his social home, Mother Ijato, was the observation that the cases of pregnancies out of wedlock were increasing in the society, which he said was a taboo in some cultures.

According to him, when these pregnancies advance to the point that they could not be terminated through the procurement of abortion, the teenage girl is left helpless.

He said that there are childless families out there that want to have babies; the best thing is for these social mothers to be admitted into the social homes and taken care of until they are delivered of the babies and the legal adoption procedure is taken.

Okwuonu decried the action of the Abia State Government of clamping down on Mother Ijato for reasons best known to it.

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