Parliamentary committee probes surge of infants stuck in hospitals and adoption system flaws

The parliamentary investigation committee spent over three hours discussing the growing number of infants confined to hospitals, currently 301 across Hungary, with a concentration in Budapest and the eastern part of the country. Deli Judit, a former adoption counsellor and head of the national adoption registry, presented data showing a drop in prospective adoptive families and linked it to successive transfers of adoption authority from the family-policy secretariat to the Prime Minister’s office and later to the Ministry of Culture and Innovation.

She highlighted policy changes such as the removal of mandatory adoption courses and the raising of age limits as detrimental. Séra Natália of the Budapest Child Protection Service emphasized the lack of clear protocols, rising numbers of children with unknown parents, and the harmful stigma faced by mothers who leave infants in hospitals. Both experts called for stronger primary health-care, crisis support for parents, and coordinated national action to reduce hospitalised child numbers. The session concluded with plans for a follow-up hearing on October 7.