SINGAPORE - A month-old baby girl beat the odds after being left for dead in Vietnam last month and is recovering at a Singapore hospital.
Trieu Hoai An, who turned one month old on Wednesday (April 24), was found in a plastic bag hanging from a tree in a coffee plantation by a farmer who heard her crying.
He took her to a Da Lat City hospital in Vietnam's Lam Dong province, about 300km north-east of Ho Chi Minh City, on March 29.
Doctors there estimated that she had been abandoned for four or five days.
The baby was sunburnt and had numerous insect bites. She had a festering wound in her badly swollen head and squirming maggots were found in her eyes and nose.
The doctors said there was little they could do and gave her not much time to live.
With no known family, the baby was adopted by the abbess Trieu Thi Thien Kim of the Hue Quang temple near Da Lat and was named Hoai An.
The 41-year-old abbess, who is also known as the Venerable Minh Tai, raised about $25,000 within days from people all over Vietnam through the temple's charity networks and social media.
With the money, she was able to take Hoai An to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Orchard Road for further treatment.
The funds were enough to cover Hoai An's first eight days of treatment, said Venerable Minh Tai.
"We have raised another $10,000 since then. Hopefully, we will be able to raise more money from donors in Vietnam, Singapore and around the world in the next few weeks."
https://www.straitstimes.com/singap...nam-turns-one-month-old-at-singapore-hospital
