Man forced wife to breastfeed puppies

He offered two cows for her hand in marriage 11 years ago. So when Nathan Awoloi needed milk for his five puppies, the hunter from Okurutok village in the Eastern Uganda district of Pallisa forced his wife, Jennifer Alupot, to breastfeed the quintet since his cows were taken by her family.

The act, however, turned disastrous when the family lost its third born child, who was sharing his mother’s breasts with the puppies, to suspected rabies early last year. Rabies is a fatal viral disease that causes acute inflammation of the brain in humans and other mammals. Police in Pallisa District arrested Mr Awoloi on May 4 but their decision to release him the next day and later label his wife an insane woman has been condemned by a civil society organisation that has taken interest in the case.

According to Ms Caroline Odoi, the Country Development Initiative Coordinator of global anti-poverty agency, ActionAid International, the police have not handled the case with the seriousness it should be accorded. “This poor woman reported this case to police. The man was arrested but released in a day. No medical examination was made and neither were the puppies got as evidence,” she said.



Ms Alupot, who currently lives in a grass thatched house that doubles as a counselling room for Pentecostal Revival Ministries after her husband threw her out, said that she started breastfeeding the puppies three years ago.

“My husband is a hunter. When people killed his dogs, he bought five puppies but feeding them was a problem. One night I woke up and found a puppy on my breast feeding. My husband was standing nearby with a panga and threatened to cut me into pieces if I resisted,” Ms Alupot narrated. “He told me the cows that would have produced milk for the puppies were used to pay my bride price. This continued for some time until my third born of four months developed rashes. I reported the case to Apopong Police Post,” she added.

Ms Alupot says by the time her baby died, its skin had developed rashes akin to hot water burns. She said the baby barked like a dog while crying. Ms Alupot, who says she was pregnant at the time the other baby died, currently has another baby that she says had started developing the same symptoms as her late brother until the intervention of ActionAid. The Medical Superintendent of Entebbe Hospital, Dr Moses Mwanga, says when a dog infected with rabies bites someone and its saliva mixes with blood of the person, the victim contracts the disease.