Experts urge caution after DNA tests soar

DNA testing: When truth hurts and why many women won’t go to heaven

Usually, blood samples or cheek swabs from the two are enough for laboratory scientists to provide results, which is around 99.9 percent accurate and north of Shs500,000 in cost.  

Mr Joshua Kitakule, the secretary general of the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda, said the demand for paternity testing is rising because globalisation and the rising cost of living have made people selfish.

While infidelity in women was not a rarity in the past, Mr Kitakule hastens to add that men back then were more accommodating.  

“Traditionally, [a man and his relatives] used to know when a child doesn’t belong to a man and even the woman wouldn’t deny” he revealed, adding that “the child would still be accommodated” once the woman “admitted] that she made a mistake.”

Mr Kitakule opined that the reason why men were so accommodative back then was because “food was available in the garden, education was not that expensive.” Globalisation, he adds, “has brought in selfishness” with people becoming individualistic.

“When you discover a child is not yours, you don’t want to spend any more money on them. You want them to go away because, currently, running a family is a very expensive venture,” he further reasoned.

LISTEN NOW: What’s behind rush for DNA tests?

Ms Agnes Namaganda—a communications specialist at Makerere University’s Child Health and Development Centre of Makerere University— recommends “more counselling to make people understand that family is not about blood.” 

She nevertheless adds: “Although many men argue that when children are not yours, there is a way they behave and that they will be the people that will kill you. Men are right to do paternity tests.”

Ms Namaganda also told Monitor that just as the husband has the right to do paternity tests, they should also be able to understand why a wife can have a child with another man.

“Over time, the women have accepted men and their behaviour—that men go astray [and have extramarital sex]. But now women are saying that if men are weak, [women] are also weak,” she said.

“Culture has also changed over time, women are also earning and they are independent. Because of that, there is that equality, that if a man [she is not married to] is hitting on her and she is sure she is safe, she will give in,” she added.

ICYMI: 32 men petition immigration to cancel children passports after DNA testing

Mr Ali Male, a counselling psychologist at A-Z Professional Counselling Support Centre in Kampala, says a common pattern emerges when women discover they are carrying another man’s child.

“After thinking about the next step and consulting her other colleagues, she ends up resolving the matter into the paternity line of the current man. That is where we get the problem,” he said. 

Common occurrence
The problem has in recent times seen officials at the Internal Affairs ministry work overtime. This week alone at least 32 men wrote to the ministry’s Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) over the same. They demanded the cancellation of children’s passports after DNA results showed they are not the biological fathers.

“When DNA tests show that a child has different paternity backgrounds, it is accompanied by shock, grief, and anger in a man who has invested so much in a child but has been told that is not his,” Mr Male explained, adding: “There is also confusion, and for women [in the wrong], there is denial and then bargaining before acceptance, which is not an easy-to-reach stage. Many take years to accept (that they did bad or bad things happened to them).”

Mr Male notes that refusing to accept the bad incident leads to depression, anxiety, and stress. 

“This happens when the person has remained in shock or is in denial or is still angry and seeks revenge,” he explained, adding that the aggrieved men should seek counselling services and should refrain from labelling themselves failures.