NEWS

Dog saves abandoned 'Angel Baby'

May 10, 2005 18:17 IST

A five-year-old dog, rummaging for food in a Nairobi, Kenya, forest, saved a baby, which, according to doctors, must have been there for at least two days.

The baby is suspected to have been abandoned by her mother last Wednesday.

After she was admitted to hospital, the baby, named Angel Baby by the nurses, has had many visitors donating clothes and nappies.

Nairobi's Daily Nation newspaper quoted local residents as saying they saw the dog carry a plastic bag across a busy road, slip under a barbed wire fence and enter a residential compound on Friday afternoon.

Mary Adhiambo told the Daily Nation that her children ran out of the house after they heard a baby crying in the compound.

'I followed them outside and we started looking around the compound. I saw my dog lying protectively with her puppy besides the soiled baby, lying in a torn black cloth,' Adhiambo told the Daily Nation.

She carried the baby into the house, gave her some milk and cleaned her with hot water. She then took the baby to a police station.

The police took the child to the Kenyatta National Hospital, where doctors found that the 3.3-kilo baby's umbilical cord was infected. They also found worms on her.

'Had she stayed longer (in the forest) she would have died,' one hospital staffer told the newspaper.

The baby is likely to make a full recovery, though she still has high fever.

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