Seventeen years ago, Ruth Mulongo had an affair with a young man from her village in Bungoma County, western Kenya. The 18-year-old became pregnant and nine months later delivered a baby girl at home during the night with her mother’s help. The baby looked weak, with one leg shorter than the other, so Mulongo’s mother told her the child was cursed. She feared her daughter wouldn’t be able to marry a good man if word got out that she’d had a disabled child. (CT agreed not to use Mulongo’s real name due to the social stigma.)
Mulongo said her mother, who had raised six children as a single mother, pressured her into agreeing to let her kill the child and hide the evidence from their community. Her mother wrapped the baby girl in a polythene bag and dumped her in a nearby shallow dam, where villagers drew water. The next morning villagers found the dead baby floating in the water and alerted local authorities.
Because neighbors knew about Mulongo’s pregnancy, she became the primary suspect. Fearing arrest, she fled in shame, first by foot and then bicycle and public transportation until she arrived in the town of Bungoma—the capital of the county, 60 miles away.
“I realized I had committed a big sin,” she said.
The killing of children born with disabilities has declined over the past two decades as laws have shifted and Christians have worked to change beliefs about disabilities inside and outside of church, according to Kupenda for the Children, a disability advocacy ministry. Still, child abandonment and occasional infanticide of children with disabilities remains a concern in West, Central, and East Africa, especially in rural areas.
Last year, police across Kenya reported spikes in child abandonment cases overall, and stigma remains a strong driver in why children with disabilities or single parents are especially affected. Though several African countries, including Kenya and Nigeria, have bolstered protections for citizens with disabilities, superstitions and misunderstandings about many conditions remain entrenched across Africa.
In May 2025, a Nigerian news station reported that infanticide continues in communities around the capital Abuja. Families often target children with albinism, babies whose mothers died in childbirth, as well as twins, which some tribes such as the Igbo and Bassa Komo believe are evil, possessing dangerous potential or supernatural powers. In a 2023 report by Africanews, Ugandan police expressed concern about a rise in abandoned babies and young children around its capital city of Kampala.
Many Africans see disability as judgment for unwed motherhood. For instance, in January, former Kenyan TV journalist Ann Ngugi spoke publicly about raising her now-22-year-old daughter, Angel, as a single mother. Angel was born with congenital hydrocephalus—a condition caused by excess fluid in the brain—and Ngugi remembers a relative blaming Angel’s enlarged head on her out-of-wedlock birth. At the time, doctors said Angel—who is now a gospel singer—might not survive.
“You have to carry all that as a mother and a caregiver and still tell this girl that she is beautiful,” Ngugi said.
Many Kenyans also believe married women who give birth to a disabled child are cursed. This has led some husbands to abandon their wives.
Pauline Imbiakha said her husband left her after the birth of their son Joseph, who had cerebral palsy. Even after Joseph fell ill with malaria and died when he couldn’t receive medical attention during a nurses’ strike, Imbiakha’s husband still didn’t return.
Seven years ago, her friend Rexina Imbenzi, the regional women’s leader for Grace to Grace Ministry—a church in Kakamega, Kenya—gave birth to a boy named Isaac with cerebral palsy. Imbenzi said her husband’s family tried to force him to divorce her, blaming her for the disability. Yet he refused. “If my husband wasn’t a born-again [Christian], I think I would have come back from church one day and found the baby killed because the pressure was from his family,” she said.
Imbenzi said extended family members question how she can be serving God but still give birth to such a child. Because babysitters cost too much and many refuse to watch Isaac as they believe he’s demon-possessed, Imbenzi’s 12-year-old daughter must sometimes stay home from school to watch him on days Imbenzi goes to church to run women’s ministry events.
Parents who fear stigmas often hide their children from their neighbors and pray for healing. Some may listen to radio and TV sermons of self-proclaimed prophets in Kenya who claim they can heal physical disabilities and attend their healing crusades, hoping for a miracle. Other Kenyans abandon their children at roadsides, hospitals, and churches.
“There are so many children who get abandoned at the health facilities by the young mothers, mostly university students and high school students,” said Eunice Obuya, a nurse from Kakamega, Kenya. “Some have disabilities, and some are normal.”
Health facilities often serve as unofficial safe havens, since Kenya doesn’t have designated places for safe abandonment. In Africa, Namibia has a safe haven law, allowing parents to turn in babies safely without penalty, but most countries do not.
Obuya said during 20 years of working in a public hospital, she witnessed more than 30 cases of abandoned children with disabilities, most of them with clubfoot, cerebral palsy, or congenital hydrocephalus. Parents abandoned one child because he had extra fingers on both hands, she said.
“Nobody wants to get closer to these children, especially the young medical workers,” Obuya said. “They still think it is a curse that can be transmitted.”
Christian health care facilities in Kenya provide corrective surgeries and rehabilitation for treatable conditions such as clubfoot and cleft lips and palates. Sometimes pastors intervene on behalf of babies at risk of being killed or abandoned, according to Kupenda for the Children. Disability ministries train parents and communities to reject stigmas, and some churches are designing ministries for children with disabilities.
Now, Ruth Mulongo said she helps lead one. After she fled her village years ago, the senior pastor of an evangelical church in Kanduyi prayed for her, counseled her through her trauma, and eventually appointed her as a youth pastor. The church also connected her to a popular repentance ministry and sent her to trainings offered by organizations promoting the rights of children with disabilities.
“If the church had not accepted me, I would not be here talking about this problem,” Mulongo said. “Maybe God had a plan for me to be the one speaking to families about child disability.”
Now married with three children, Mulongo serves as a junior pastor for her church, where she counsels parents with children who have disabilities, organizes educational seminars, and connects parents with support organizations like Kupenda for the ChildrenandAIC-CURE hospital in Kijabe.
“Many [parents] feel ashamed to be seen with their disabled children in public … even in church,” Mulongo said. “But I tell them to accept what God gave them.”
Mulongo conducts home visits, praying with families before gathering their relatives and neighbors to teach them about disabilities and what causes them. She tells husbands not to blame their wives or assume they are cursed. She also prepares young couples psychologically for raising a child with a disability: “This changes their attitude towards disability, and they end up accepting that it is not always a curse.”
Mulongo also tells her own story, explaining how she caved to pressure from her mother to kill her child and how God forgave her.
“They should know that everything God does has a reason,” she said. “The pressure from relatives should not be a reason to kill an innocent baby.”
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