Stray dog proves guardian for Angel

A NEWBORN baby dumped in a Kenyan forest was miraculously saved by a stray dog which carried her across a busy road and through a barbed-wire fence to a shed where she was eventually discovered with a litter of pups.

The baby girl has been named ‘Angel’ by hospital workers. She was clad in a ragged shirt and wrapped in a plastic bag when the dog picked her up last Friday in the Ngong Forest on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

“When the dog picked up the baby in a dirty bag, it came and dropped her behind the wooden building where the dog has its puppies,” a witness said.

The 7lb 4oz girl was taken to a hospital and “is doing well, responding to treatment. She is stable ... she is on antibiotics”, said Hannah Gakuo, spokeswoman for the Kenyatta National Hospital.

The baby was found after two children heard her cries near their shack.

“I followed them outside and we started looking around the compound and a nearby plot,” said Mary Adhiambo, the children’s mother, who lives in the shanty town.

They found the tan mixed-breed dog lying with a puppy beside the mud- splattered baby.

The short- haired dog with brown eyes has no name and was a stray, residents said.

They took the infant to a nearby police station before taking her to hospital officers said.

Doctors believe the baby had been abandoned about two days before the dog discovered her, said Gakuo.

“She cried a lot during admission, because her umbilical cord was infected,” Gakuo said.

“She is very quiet. She just feeds and sleeps.”

Dozens of Kenyans have visited the baby, who has curly black hair, in the hospital after learning of her rescue, Gakuo said.

“She is now fine. She is warm. She is in a separate room ... with a lady who is also nursing a baby admitted in hospital for treatment,” she said. “The lady is looking after her as if she is her own child.”

Infant abandonment is a growing problem in poor neighbourhoods in Kenya. Most people who abandon babies are never caught.

Gakuo said that each month about two infants are brought to the public hospital in the capital.

“Abandoned babies are taken to the Kenyatta

National Hospital because it is a public hospital,” Gakuo said.

“People are donating diapers and baby clothes for this one.”