A NEWBORN abducted from the Amang Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center in Marikina City has been safely recovered and returned to his family, Mayor Maan Teodoro said on Tuesday. The infant was born on Dec. 25, at around 10 a.m., and remained in the hospital for routine post-natal procedures. Police reports said a woman dressed as a nurse, claiming to conduct a newborn screening, entered the ward on Friday and took the baby from his mother. The act was caught on CCTV. By 3 p.m., the infant had not been returned, prompting the mother to seek police help. The video footage of the incident was submitted to the Philippine National Police, leading to the abductor’s arrest. Baby Ryu was safely recovered on Monday, Dec. 29, and returned to his family. The baby’s grandfather, Mike Acasio, told reporters that unidentified individuals had ap-proached his daughter, the baby’s mother, and told her not to speak about the incident. He said they decided to make the incident public anyway. ”We needed to inform the public so that he could be found faster and to prevent this kind of in-cident from happening to other families,” Acasio said. He also criticized the hospital’s security, noting that incoming visitors are monitored more strictly than those departing the premises. ”Baby Ryu is back with his family. As a mother, this incident weighs heavily on me, especially since a hospital should be a safe place for babies and their families. We closely coordinated with authorities to safely return Ryu to his family,” Teodoro said. The abductor, she added, is now in police custody. Meanwhile, the Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday directed all hospitals to implement strict security measures following two separate incidents of infant abduction in DOH-run hospi-tals. ”This is not the first time that it has happened; this is the time of year when people (hospital staff) are physically present but mentally absent because of the holiday season,” Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said in a press conference at the Amang Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center (ARMMC) in Marikina. ”We urge all hospitals to strictly enforce identification requirements for anyone handling new-borns. Staff must ask for IDs and, in case of doubt, involve nurse supervisors or senior staff im-mediately,” he added. ”If there’s any suspicion, staff should always escalate to supervisors and never hand over a child without proper verification,” Herbosa said. Dr. Imelda Mateo, ARMMC director, said the “skeletal” staff during the holiday season contrib-uted to security vulnerabilities. ”The suspect was tracked down with the help of hospital security protocols and immediate re-porting by staff,” Mateo added. In the Tondo Medical Center, a similar incident happened on Dec. 29, where the suspect was caught immediately. Authorities said the suspect bypassed security by wearing a scrub suit while entering the emer-gency room. Marikina Police chief Col. Jenny Tecson said the two incidents were not related.