An anonymous baby ’drop box’ in southern Japan received 17 babies from around the country in its first year since opening last May, reports said.

The Catholic-run Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto City created the ’Stork’s Cradle’ following a series of high-profile cases in which newborns were abandoned in parks and at supermarkets.

People can leave babies in an incubator via a small hatch on the side of the hospital.

The children are cared for by the hospital, then put up for adoption or sent to a home for infants.

Of the 17 babies, there were 13 boys and four girls, Kyodo News agency said. Fourteen of the babies were infants less than one month old, two were less than a year old, and one was a preschooler.

Notes accompanied six of the babies, none of whom showed signs of abuse or neglect, according to a Kumamoto City official cited by Kyodo.

It is illegal to abandon babies in Japan, but police say they do not try to find the parents of babies left at hospitals or at homes for abandoned children.

AP/ TOKYO