Media Reports

Man’s Best Friend
Saves Abandoned Baby in Kenya


Local boys lovingly pet Savior

(Originally in English)

[Nairobi, Kenya] On May 6, 2005, a newborn baby abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog, who had apparently carried her across a busy street and through a barbed wire fence to a wood and corrugated metal shack. The infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies near the shed after two children alerted local residents that they heard a baby crying. “I followed them outside and we started looking around the compound and a nearby plot,’’ said Mary Adhiambo, the children’s mother.

The residents eventually found the tan mixed-breed dog lying protectively with a puppy beside the mud-splattered, seven pound, four ounce baby, who was wrapped in a torn black shirt. Adhiambo told a newspaper reporter that she washed the child, cleaned her umbilical cord, dressed her in fresh clothes and fed her. Then the residents took the infant to a nearby police station and from there she the was taken to the Kenyatta National Hospital.

Doctors believe the baby, named “Angel’’ by hospital workers, had been abandoned about two days before the dog discovered her. “She cried a lot during admission because her umbilical cord was infected,’’ said Hannah Gakuo, a hospital spokeswoman, “but she is now very quiet. She just feeds and sleeps. I was there this morning and she looked at me and yawned, looked at me again and yawned. She is now fine. She is warm. She is in a separate room with a lady who is nursing another baby admitted to the hospital for treatment. The lady is looking after her as if she were her own child. People are now donating diapers and baby clothes for Angel.’’

The stray dog that saved the child was also cared for on Tuesday (May 10), said Jean Gilchrist of the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals. Animal welfare officials named the dog “Mkombozi,” which means “Savior,” and gave it a bath and de-worming.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said that authorities were investigating the rescue story, adding, “This is a very interesting development and the government is looking into it because if it happened the way it has been relayed, it is one of those amazing things that happens in life that defies human explanation. It indicates that there is someone out there watching over us.”

 

Media Reports
Busan Ilbo, Korea