Ms Lukia Nadago should be nursing her new-born
baby but instead struggles to
hold back tears after a woman she
describes as short, of a light complexion and
wearing a veil stole her
baby on Sunday.
“I did not talk much with the woman but she was
there on a bed next to me and
she left a couple of times claiming she
was going to breast-feed her baby that
was in special care unit,” Ms
Nadago recalls.
At about 5am on Sunday morning, Nadago’s joy of
giving birth to a baby girl
was crushed in a blink of an eye after the
stranger disappeared with her new
born baby at Mulago hospital. Ms
Nadago, who hails from Kawanda, a city
suburb, gave birth last Saturday
to a healthy baby girl.
It was after she had been transferred from the
labour ward for recuperation
that she met a woman with a cannula on her
who disguised as a new mother
and informed her that she had given birth
to a premature baby.
Within no time, the ladies had become friends
since they had something in
common- they were both “new mothers”. They
continued talking for the rest
of the evening and when Nadago wanted to
go and change her sanitary towel,
she entrusted her baby with the
stranger. Upon return, the woman had vanished
with the child.
Mr Enoch Kusasira, the Mulago hospital’s
spokesperson, advised mothers that
use the facility to be cautious about
their surroundings.
“In this case, the naivety of the mother has
transferred to criminal negligence and
with common cases of
child-trafficking and cases where women steal babies and
deceive their
partners, you cannot blindly trust anybody,” Mr Kusasira says.
However, Ms Nadago’s aunt, Ms Jessica Napera, who
was her caretaker in the
hospital, says she was blocked from entering
the ward.
“The guards told us they did not see anybody leaving with a child,” she says.
Previous cases
Last year,
Gorreth Kajumba and Samuel Egesa sued Mulago hospital of negligence
after their newborn baby girl went missing. A similar case of a stolen
baby was
recorded in the hospital in 2013 after Aisha Nampijja’s baby
disappeared.
Nampijja had entrusted the baby with a woman while she had
gone to respond to nature’s call.
