MUMS-TO-BE who fear their newborn babies may be kidnapped were today reassured that everything possible is being done to protect them.

The pledge was made by hospital chiefs in East Lancashire following the dramatic case of Karli Hawthorne who was taken from a cot at an Essex hospital just three hours after her birth. She was reunited with her tearful parents after a major police hunt.

But mothers at the 76-bed maternity unit in Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn, can sleep soundly in the knowledge that their offsprings will be protected by a combination of high technology and staff vigilance.

All babies at the state-of-the-art unit are fitted with electronic tags around their arms or legs which cause an alarm saying "Baby Alert" to go off when they pass outside the unit.

Any breach of the area controlled by the tag also immediately alerts nurses, the main alarm control centre and security staff.

Hospital site services manager Mike Hall said: "We have closed circuit television throughout the maternity unit - some cameras are more obvious than others. "They are all linked to a central monitoring station which has a 24-hour recording facility.

"We also have a policy whereby babies don't leave their mother's side and we also have a security service in place at the main entrance."

"It would be easy to say we are kidnap proof, but it's a case of being ever vigilant. You cannot rest on this technology - it's about people and staff as well."

Burnley General Hospital regularly reviews its security measures on the Edith Watson Maternity Unit to ensure mothers and newborn babies receive the safest care.

Lessons are learned from any incidents, including the abduction of baby Abbie Humphries who was snatched from a Nottingham medical centre three years ago. It was 16 days before she was reunited with her parents.

A spokesman for Burnley NHS Trust said: "We learned valuable lessons from the Abbie Humphries case and our security measures, although good, were reviewed and tightened up.

"We will not go into detail about our security measures because that would minimise their effectiveness, but we can reassure mothers-to-be they are reviewed regularly."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.