Today I am going to continue to address issues that are commonly barriers for people considering adoption, and are also often concerns for families that do move forward with their adoption plans.

I have already written about financial barriers as well as the worry of being able to love an adopted child the same way a parent loves a child born to them. Now I am going to tackle the health issue, as that is one that seems to pop up very early on in the “considering adoption process” and is a question that I get a lot.

I know that very early on in our first adoption process, one of the things we heard over and over from well-meaning friends and family was “How do you know she will be healthy?” and even the much more offensive, “Can you send her back if there is something wrong with her?” (Like we were ordering a sweater from a catalogue or something.)

Here is the cold hard truth…you don’t know for sure that any child being adopted is going to be healthy.

You also don’t know for sure that any child you give birth to is going to be healthy. No child, anywhere, comes with a health guarantee or warrantee.

That being said, there are many things that parents can do to be as aware as possible of their child’s health status before they come home.

Most adoption programs, both domestic and international, have a process for “screening” children for major health issues. HIV, Hepatitis, TB and other infectious diseases are often tested for.

Some adoption programs, such as domestic adoptions, adoptions from Korea, etc. can have very detailed medical information on the children. Adoptions programs from countries such as Ethiopia, Russia, Vietnam, etc. have much less medical technology available to them, so they are unable to provide as much medical information and are unable to test for and diagnose some things.

In some programs detailed medical information on the child's birth parents is available. Other times, little to no family health history is known.

In almost any adoption, the perspective parents are given some sort of medical report on the child. This report may or may not include lab work results, and the amount of information included can vary dramatically between programs and agencies. The age of the child, the location of the child and the amount of time the child has spent in the agency’s care all can affect the amount of medical information that is available.

Many adoptive parents take these medical reports, along with any pictures and video they have of the child they are considering, and have it reviewed by a professional adoption doctor. Doctors that specialize in international adoption medicine not only are familiar with issues common in adopted children that may not be common in the average child in the US (such as rickets and intestinal parasites). They are also trained to look for the facial features and other signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,can often tell if a small baby is cause for concern or not and have other expertise related to adoption medicine.


In some adoption programs, such as Russia, it is common for children to have strange terms on their medical reports that do not correlate with terms used in the USA. In situations like this, it is extra important to consult a doctor that is experienced with international adoptions.

But while using an international adoption doctor is a valuable resource, it is important to remember that they are also unable to give you any sort of “guarantee”. They can give you their best educated guess and their professional opinion, (although sometimes have little to go on), but it is very difficult for even the best doctor to be thorough without seeing the child in person.

Oftentimes, accepting a referral involves some level of a “leap of faith”.

Continued here...

*photo from Free Graphics.com