Hospitals Clash With Centuries-Old Placenta Rites

Across much of Africa, families still bury the placenta after birth, but hospitals and a growing wellness market are reshaping how that centuries-old custom actually plays out.

Story Snapshot

BBC’s Focus on Africa reports rising interest in placenta-based wellness products alongside long-standing burial customs.
Traditional practice across many African cultures treats the placenta as something to bury, not consume, tying it to a child’s protection and destiny.
Peer-reviewed research confirms placenta burial is a widespread indigenous practice meant to guard children from harm.
Burial methods and locations vary widely by country, family, and even the child’s sex, showing no single “African tradition” exists.

A Centuries-Old Custom Meets a Changing World

The placenta has never been treated as ordinary medical waste in most African households. Families have long seen it as a piece of the newborn tied directly to that child’s fate. Burying it, often with specific rituals, was believed to shield the baby from witchcraft and secure a stable future. That belief runs deep across generations and geography.

BBC’s Focus on Africa recently examined whether that belief is holding steady or shifting under modern pressures. Reporters noted rising interest in placenta-based wellness products, a trend that did not exist in the same form a generation ago. At the same time, on-air interviews confirmed that many families across the continent still insist on burying the placenta and performing rituals meant to protect a child’s destiny.

What The Research Shows About Burial Practices

A peer-reviewed review published through the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s public archive backs up the cultural weight of this practice. Researchers found that indigenous groups worldwide, including many in Africa, bury the placenta specifically to keep evil spirits and witchcraft away from the child. The burial site itself carries meaning, varying by community, but the underlying goal, protecting the newborn, stays consistent.

Academic work out of a French-language journal breaks the practice into two broad categories used across African societies. Families either bury the placenta inside the space where they live or dispose of it outside that space entirely. That distinction matters because it shows the custom is not one uniform ritual but a set of localized decisions shaped by kinship, geography, and belief.

Cameroon and Niger Show How Local Variation Works

Reporting out of Cameroon has long documented mothers who reject hospital disposal outright. Some parents ask staff to hand over the placenta so they can bury it within family compounds, following customs passed down for generations. Local accounts describe burying the placenta and umbilical cord together under stones or in specially dug holes, a practice tied directly to protecting the child from witchcraft.

Scholarly work on Niger adds another layer, showing that placenta burial can shift based on the child’s sex and the family’s kinship structure. Academic researchers describe these rituals as “traveling companions,” a phrase that captures how the placenta accompanies a child’s identity long after birth. That regional detail reinforces a broader point: African placenta customs were never identical from one country to the next.

Wellness Trends Add A New Layer, Not A Replacement

The rise of placenta-based wellness products marks a newer development layered on top of, not replacing, burial traditions. BBC’s reporting flagged growing interest in these products as part of a broader wellness movement. That trend sits alongside, rather than erases, the deep-rooted belief that burial protects a child’s future, based on the on-the-ground testimony BBC gathered directly from communities still practicing it.

What emerges from the reporting and the academic record is a picture of adaptation, not abandonment. Families are not discarding centuries of belief about the placenta’s power over a child’s destiny. Instead, they are navigating that belief alongside hospital systems, urban living, and new commercial products that did not exist when these rituals first took shape generations ago.