Placenta and umbilical cord found on Earlwood riverbank

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Police in New South Wales are ramping up the search for a mother and her newborn following the discovery of a placenta and umbilical cord on the banks of Sydney's Cooks River.

Transcript

00:00Police are pursuing three different avenues to try and find the mother and her newborn

00:05child whom the umbilical cord and placenta found here yesterday might belong to.

00:10The first avenue is a pathology test that will determine the gender of the baby and

00:15might reveal crucial information to help the police identify the mother.

00:19The second avenue is specialized blood sniffing dogs who have been deployed in the area over

00:23the past few hours to try and find other biological material in the surrounding area to where

00:30the original umbilical cord and placenta were found.

00:32This could be blood or amniotic fluid and might help the police determine whether a

00:37birth actually happened here or somewhere else and the placenta and umbilical cord were

00:42simply disposed of here.

00:44And the third are divers, police divers who have gone into the mangroves for the past

00:49few hours to try and find anything else that might have been dumped or buried into the

00:54river.

00:55The trial birth for many people can be a traumatic time and it can be very distressing.

01:02I am deeply concerned for the safety and the mental health of the mother and also for the

01:09safety of her baby.

01:12I ask that she comes forward to health services, to police, to anyone that can offer her any

01:20form of support during this very difficult time.

01:23Police have stressed that their first priority is the safety and health of the mother and

01:27her baby.

01:28They have emphasized that there is no judgment and that they just want her to find the nearest

01:33hospital and get some treatment.

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