Residents of Omukihogo Trading Centre in Nyaruhita Village Rurehe sub county in Ruhinda South Mitooma district today woke up in a shock when a newborn baby was found alive dumped in a bush.
The incident happened today in the ewe morning hours when Jacintah (surname unknown), a resident, was going to awake a neighbour for morning Rosary prayers only to hear a voice of a young baby crying in the wilderness. Upon checking, an abandoned baby girl was found alive with an amblical cord un attached crying helplessly in a bush.
She made an alarm which gathered residents from neighborhood who rescued the baby and taken her to the LC1 chairman as they awaited for police.
Mother of abandoned baby found.
Eye witnesses who talked to Parrotsug on conditions of anonymity said residents desperately tracked down the mother.
According to eye witnesses, a mother estimated to be in her early 17s identified as Brendah Kekishengye, a secondary school student and resident of the area was tracked down and forced to carry her baby home.
Its however reported that the mother got labour pains as she walked to her grandparents’ home for maternal help and gave birth in a nearby bush where she left the child and walked back home to pick cloths in which to carry a baby.
Residents react.
The incident attracted mixed reactions from the public domain with many blaming the gov’t for keeping long learners in holidays due to COVID-19 lockdown crisis the long stay that has many girls conceived. Others blamed the increased cases of teenage pregnancy on immoral cross generation sex which is rampant among the unadvisable teenagers.
Teenage pregnancies increase in COVID-19 lockdown.
Uganda is among the countries with the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the sub-saharan Africa. Over 4,000 school- going girls are likely to miss school after they reportedly conceived and others got married during the corona virus lockdown.
According to media reports, 25-30% cases of early pregnancies were reported in Bullisa district. Other districts of Kitgum, Kasese to mention but a few feared to have fewer numbers of female learners in the post COVID-19 era due to early pregnancies.
Findings by UNICEF and UNFPA indicates that increased rates of violence, poverty and COVID-19 crises are among other factors attributed to global escalation of teenage pregnancy cases.
By publication time, police had not arrived at the scene but our reporters learned that local council authorities had notified police. Both the mother and her newborn baby girl were sent home.
