Objective: Worldwide, approximately 40,000 children per year are moved between more than 100 countries through adoption. By law, guardianship, not adoption, is permitted in Bangladesh. To the best of our knowledge, no scientific study on guardianship or adoption is ever reported from Bangladesh. Our study, for the first time, is reporting on some of the basic characteristics of adoption in Bangladesh.

Materials and methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on the hospitalized adopted children between September, 2009 and October, 2010 in the Institute of Child and Mother Health, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Total 54 adopted children, who were hospitalized due to different health problems, were included in the study.

Result: The mean (±SD) age of the studied adopted children was 4.29±3.47 months. Among them, 42 (77.8%) were female and 12 (22.2%) were male child. All adoption happened among un-related Muslim families. Infertility was the commonest (72%) reason for adopting a child. No adoption took place according to the existing guardianship law in Bangladesh, and none was legally documented. Financial insolvency and the death of the biological mother reasoned for allowing adoption in 50% and 29.6%% of cases respectively. In about one-third of the cases, the biological parents received money from the adopting parents. Acute respiratory tract infection, gastroenteritis and undernutrition were the major health problems of the adopted children. Since Islamic law does not allow inheritance of wealth to the adopted children, all the adopting parents left the inheritance issue to be solved “in future”.

Conclusion: The current guardianship law needs wide publicity, proper execution and strict monitoring. This law
necessitates re-evaluation or possible adaptation into a full adoption law that can secure the future rights of the adopted children.