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Stray, nursing dog rescues abandoned baby in Kenya
Tot given antibiotics and is doing well

The Associated Press

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

CREDIT: The Associated Press
'Angel' in hospital after being rescued from forest area by a stray dog.

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NAIROBI -- A stray dog saved the life of a newborn baby girl after finding the abandoned infant in a forest and carrying it across a busy road and through some barbed wire to her litter of puppies, witnesses report.

The dog found the infant, clad in tattered clothing, in a poor neighbourhood near the Ngong Forests in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Stephen Thoya told the Daily Nation newspaper.

The dog found the baby Friday in a plastic bag in which the infant had been abandoned, said Aggrey Mwalimu, owner of the shed where the animal was guarding its puppies. The seven-pound, four-ounce infant was taken to hospital for treatment on Saturday.

"She is doing well, responding to treatment," Hanna Gakuo, a spokeswoman for Kenyatta National Hospital, said in a telephone interview from the hospital where health workers named the infant Angel.

"She is stable. She is on antibiotics," said Gakuo.

Kenya's news media often report the abandonment of newborns by mothers. Poverty and the inability to care for the child are seen as the root cause of the problem. Most people who abandon babies are never caught.

"Abandoned babies are normally taken to the Kenyatta National Hospital because it is a public hospital," Gakuo said. "People are now donating diapers and baby clothes for this one."