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One stormy night  last year,  a villager in the central county of Taichung found a seven-month-old baby  abandoned in a hut.
The villager  told police about the crying boy, and the infant was later handed over to a child welfare centre.
The boy, named Hao Hao by  staff, has a serious respiratory problem, which was apparently why he was abandoned.
And he is not alone:  509 children were abandoned by their parents in Taiwan last year.
'On average, 1.4 children were deserted every day by their parents last year, an increase of 40 per cent compared with  five years ago,' said Alicea Wang, of the  Child Welfare League Foundation.
Ms Wang cited financial problems,  birth out of wedlock and  disabilities as the major reasons for parents abandoning their children.
'Hao Hao happens to have  a disability,' she said. 'When he was first handed over to us by the social workers he had trouble breathing.'
Ms Wang added that his condition had improved  in the past six months  with the  determined efforts of a foundation volunteer.  The carer recalled that she had to wake up at least three times a night to care for Hao Hao, who is now learning  to walk.
Ms Wang's foundation, one of Taiwan's major child welfare  centres, provides short-term care for orphans.
They  are placed with  volunteer families  for around  seven months before it is hoped they will be  officially adopted.
'But children  like Hao Hao will take at least double the time and effort to find someone willing to adopt them,' Ms Wang said.
'Babies born with physical disorders, babies of drug-addicted parents or with  darker skin are the 'abandoned of the abandoned'.'
She explained that the offspring  of drug addicts developed symptoms such as restlessness or a breathing problem known as dyspnea, which leaves them short of breath, while darker-skinned babies  were sometimes unpopular with people who were seeking to adopt  because they did not want their  children to look 'too different'.
Darker-skinned babies are  often born to unmarried foreign domestic helpers or  labourers in Taiwan, who if caught   with a child would be sent back to their home countries  under the terms of their work contracts.
But why are more children being deserted?  Ms Wang said financial problems  were the main cause of the increase.
'The economy has not been good in the past few years, forcing financially strained parents to give up their children,' she said.
She said  changes in sexual behaviour in Taiwan had  also resulted in more unmarried mothers.
Some mothers  deserted  newborn babies  because they did not have the money to support a child or feared they would be punished by their  parents.
Ms Wang said some unemployed or divorced women  also tended to give up their children.
But what most concerns Ms Wang is the dramatic decline in the number of families willing to adopt abandoned children.
That  figure had plummeted by 35 per cent in a decade,  she said.
The chief reasons for this were changing traditions and in  ideas about marriage, as well as altered personal finances, Ms Wang added.
'In the past, most  couples wanted to have children,' she said. 'If they could not have their own babies, they would try to adopt children from orphanages. But now more people have chosen not to have children at all.'
In addition, advances in  fertilisation technology had  given infertile  couples   a chance of having their own children,  Ms Wang said.
She added that  the  cost of living and education had increased sharply in the past decade.
'This has made it more and more difficult for abandoned children to find  families,' she said.
Ms Wang said her foundation was raising NT$10 million (HK$2.4 million) to help support abandoned children still trapped in orphanages and was seeking public donations.



Abandoned children fill Taiwan welfare centres