Mandatory premarital physical examinations for engaged couples should be resumed in China, and the social security net should be strengthened to stop the increase in abandoned children, many of whom have physical defects, experts said.

Although the exact count of abandoned children in Guangzhou is unavailable, the number of children at the Guangzhou Children's Social Welfare Home, one of the largest of its kind in China, continues to increase, its president, Xu Jiu, told China Daily.

The majority of the children in the home were abandoned as babies. Some of them are also vagrants sent from rescue centers.

The city's social welfare home for children now cares for 1,900 children.

Some 900 of them live in foster homes with caretakers who receive a stipend from the government as child support payment.

Up to 98 percent of the children at the home center have physical defects, many of them serious.

The majority of the abandoned babies were brought to Guangzhou, where a number of large hospitals exist, from other cities and villages where they were abandoned after their parents found they could not afford the high medical bills.

The increase in abandoned children is linked to the abolition of the premarital physical examination policy, according to Xu.

Several other factors are responsible as well: birth defects; gender discrimination against girls, especially in remote underdeveloped areas; and births outside of marriage, especially to young parents, said Zeng Jinhua, director of the Guangdong Youth and Children Research and Development Center.

To stop the increase in abandoned babies, the mandatory premarital physical examination should be resumed with financial support from the government to help ensure the health of babies, both Xu and Zeng said.

Related departments should set up special institutions to provide such checks or subsidize existing hospitals to make these checks, Zeng suggested.

Examinations at home should be provided in some cases, he said.

Xu suggested the government boosts the funding for pregnancy examinations. The best scenario is that government offers them for free, he said.