'Swapped baby' reunited with family in El Salvador

A British man and his Salvadoran wife have been reunited with their son after a DNA test proved that they had left hospital with the wrong baby after he was born in a private hospital in El Salvador in Central America.

Richard Cushworth and Mercedes Casanella said that they had become concerned that they had the wrong baby after noticing that his features were different and his skin noticeably darker than those of the boy they saw immediately after Casanella gave birth.

The pair, both Christian missionaries working in Latin America, said they thought that their son had been "snatched so he could be sold to child traffickers", The Guardian reports.

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Following a DNA test, a Salvadoran judge ordered that the babies should be switched and that Dr Alejandro Guidos, who was involved in the birth of the two children, be prosecuted. Guidos, who denies any wrongdoing, is now prohibited from leaving El Salvador until the case is resolved.

Before the swap took place, Casanella told reporters: "I have a beautiful baby at home. It's not mine and maybe there's another mother suffering the same as I am and perhaps I have her baby."

Cushworth, who comes from West Yorkshire, said that he and Casanella travelled to El Salvador to give birth in her homeland, but that the swap had been a huge ordeal. "It's a horrible situation for me, for her (Casanella), for my family, her family. A child is an experience you have for a lifetime... this is a life-long injury that's very, very deep, and it's horrible."

Francisco Meneses, the couple's lawyer, added: "We don't have anything against the people who were involved in the baby's birth, but we want all these people to put their hands on their hearts because from the doctor who performed the surgery, the paediatrician, anaesthesiologist, and the two nurses who were in the delivery room, it's very important for them to tell us what happened."