THE Sars outbreak forced China to suspend yesterday the issuing of travel permits to couples from overseas who are adopting babies there. Families who have been waiting years to bring their new baby home are now in limbo.

Twenty-three British families who have been matched with a Chinese baby and sent details and photographs are no longer able to go to China to collect it. Scores more families who have applied to adopt a Chinese orphan face an even longer wait as a backlog of applications builds up.

The China Centre of Adoption Affairs, the government body that organises all overseas adoptions from China, said that it had stopped issuing permits, known as Notices of Coming to China, to “avoid cross-infection (from Sars) that might be caused by a flow of people”. It also urged families that had been issued with a travel permit to “try their best to put off their schedule of travelling to China”.

The organisation did say that it would continue to deal with applications that it had already received with a view to continuing the adoption process “in a due course in light of the situation for the control of the epidemic of Sars”.

The news has come as a blow to Nicky and Jonathan Holt from Bicester, Oxfordshire, who received details of the baby girl they are adopting six weeks ago and who are desperate to bring her home.

Mrs Holt said: “We are left in this awful state of knowing that our daughter is out there, but not being able to go and get her. Each day we have to wait is another day of our daughter’s life that we are not seeing. She’s just coming up to nine months old now.

“It’s possible that we could be missing being with her at a crucial stage in her development and that, in the long term, this could affect her ability to form attachments with other people. Not only are we unable to bring her home now, but we have no idea when we might be able to go.”

As the baby, their second adopted Chinese child, comes from Jaingxi province, which has only had a few reported cases of Sars, the Holts see no reason why Mr Holt could not collect her by travelling via Shanghai to avoid Beijing and by putting himself in quarantine on his return home.

Like most couples who have got this far, the Holts have waited for more than two years to reach the final stages of the process. It began in March 2001 with a Home Study assessment by social services to see whether they were suitable adopters.

Their only official means of communicating with the China Centre of Adoption Affairs is through the Department of Health, although they have also hired a private interpreter. So far the Holts have spent £4,000 on the adoption, which is likely to have cost up to £12,000 by the time their daughter reaches their home.

Since the Sars outbreak, some parents have managed to bring children back from China, but it has been difficult.

Gabrielle Jordan, who returned to Norwich from China on Tuesday with her 13-month-old daughter, Mia, was among the last batch of British couples to be issued with an invitation to travel before the clampdown. Even so, her trip was severely affected by the epidemic.

“I brought my travel plans forward a week because I feared they might do something that might stop me getting to Mia,” she said.

At the last minute she had to find new interpreters because the ones she had arranged to use were not allowed to leave Beijing.

Although the Government advises against travelling to parts of China because of Sars, Ms Jordan, 45, a nursery teacher, said that nothing would have stopped her. “I had waited three years for Mia. I was determined to get her,” she said.

British cases

At least one of the eight people treated for suspected Sars in Britain had definitely caught the disease, laboratory tests have proved. They were successfully treated and have now returned home. Five of the eight suspects either tested positive for other diseases or negative for Sars. The Health Protection Agency said that results from the last two were still awaited.

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