I have been watching a story unfold in China this week that is absolutely breaking my heart. An American family was there adopting their little girl. New rules from the CDC now require newly adopted children to be tested for TB before being allowed to leave their country of origin. This little girl tested positive a month ago, but no one except her orphanage knew. (They were unaware of the new CDC rules.) They began medically treating the child, who is now no longer contagious. Children cannot pass TB via cough anyway, because they are unable to cough hard enough to bring the germ up from their lungs. SO...like I said, this child IS NOT CONTAGIOUS.
She has been denied a visa to the US. Her parents, who have a child back home waiting for them. Neither can stay in China due to both needing to go back to work.
The CDC said their newly adopted daughter needed to have a sputnum test--which she did--and it came back negative. Then the CDC said the test was not performed at a facility that they approved, therefore it could not be accepted. Their facility will take weeks to complete the testing.
Many calls and emails have been made, but it came down to the decision of the top man at the CDC and he refused to grant a waiver to keep this little girl with her family. If this child had been a biological child, she would not have been prevented from going home.
Her parents have had no choice but to leave this little one in China with another family until all the CDC requirements have been met. This is a new law by the CDC, and will no doubt start to affect other families in the adoption process. This law is another example of hysteria-driven rules that make no sense. Why would you keep a child--who is unable to pass the germ to anyone on a plane--from being with his/her family?
I hope that the man in charge at the CDC will take the time to watch the heartbreaking video of this family being torn apart. At the very end, the little girl is crying and begging her new daddy, "Daddy, please don't leave. Daddy, please don't leave." I watched it with tears streaming down my face.
As an adoptive mom, knowing how fragile the emotional bonds are the first few weeks, I cannot imagine what this little girl is going though--and how many, MANY months and years it will take her to overcome this. How will she ever learn to trust her new parents when she has no way of understanding WHY they left her in China? It is much more than just a few weeks of separation. To her--this is an eternity--and she will most likely not get over this for a very long time. I have wanted to remain calm about this situation and not jump on a bandwagon of hysteria, but after watching all the hoops the adoptive parents jumped through this week to try to keep their family together, I am now outraged at the total miscarriage of justice that has taken place. Here is the family's blog if you want to read the full story.
