Georgina Lennon :: Fistula Article...
Up to five days in labour, in over 100-degree heat, excruciating pain followed by the cries of the mother as she is handed her still born baby to cradle in her arms.
Harrowing labour like this is every day life for the women of Nigeria, with some women as young as 12-years-old being subjected to this endless, un-necessary pain. And when the birth is over a more demeaning fate awaits them.
The prospect of a life of isolation from family members and their communities awaits these helpless women, as they are hidden away, as they are no longer in control of their bodily functions.
Shunned, ashamed and scarred for life, thousands of women from Africa and South East Asia are every year are forced into squalor as they become outcasts in their own communities for being plagued with a debilitating disease that can so easily be cured, given the right care.
Fistulas are a serious complication of childbirth that leave the mother physically debilitated and often, permanently ostracised by her family and community.
They develop when - because of the position of the foetus - the narrowness of the pelvis doesn’t allow the baby to pass through its mother’s birth canal.
Married at just 12-years-old, Fatimata Ataher, who is now 14-years-old, has already experienced the distressing impact fistulas cause since losing her baby last year.
She was in labour for three days before her son was stillborn, killed by the severity of her contractions. During extended labour the pressure from the trapped foetus cuts off the blood supply to tissue between the mothers vagina and her bladder, causing that tissue to die away and creating a hole or fistula.
The most terrifying thing about this condition is that it is 100 per cent preventable.
By giving these women a caesarean section birth, the existing fistulas can be stitched up immediately after delivery, fully healing in just a short time. However without surgery, the woman, for the rest of her life, will leak urine and feces through the fistula and out through her vagina. In turn the woman’s husband will abandon her, embarrassed by his wife’s debilitating condition.
The price of this operation is around $300, however millions of women in Africa have to live a life of desuetude, as they can’t afford it.
Fatimata is hopeful that UN doctors will be able to heal her. She watches nervously as anaesthesia is given to numb her form the waist down. Next Dr.Sleemi swabs Fatimata’s vagina with betadine – urine leaks from her fistula, dripping into a metal container on the floor. Dr Sleemi cuts away the scar tissue then she makes small, careful stitches that will seal the fistula forever.
In the operating next door, Dr Echols faces an even more difficult case. As she lays out her surgical instruments, a nurse tightens a broken light to stop it from flickering, as they pray the light will remain on while the doctor operates on her 20-year-old patient.
In unbearable circumstances, these doctors work through the night trying to give life back to many women, some of whom are still children themselves, so that they can be accepted back into their families and perhaps one day have a child of their own. At leas two million women and girls around the world, most in Africa and South East Asia, suffer from this devastating disease and at least 100,000 more develop every year, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Niger has the highest fertility rate in sub-Saharan, Africa, with girls as young as
9-years-old marrying and bearing – not always through choice - up to eight children each.
These factors make it extremely difficult for doctors, as their lack of access to sufficient medical care makes fistulas a severe problem in Niger. What’s more, UNFPA estimate there are only six surgeons in Niger able to treat fistulas. That’s why in 1995, doctors from the United Kingdom and the United States join forces with a group of Nigerian doctors, in what will become ‘Fistula Fortnight’, to help heal hundreds of women. The two-week pilot was a result of a unique partnership between UNFPA, Federal and State Governments of Nigeria, Virgin Unite, he Nigerian Red Cross, VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), health organisations and no-governmental agencies.
By day eight of the Fistula fortnight, around 348 women with fistulas had been surgically treated by a team of Nigerian and volunteer international doctors at four sites in Nigeria.
“I’m so happy,” said 13-year-old Ubaida Surajo, one of ten women and girls treated on the first day of the Fortnight at Babba Ruga Fistula Hospital in Katsina. “I’m grateful to the doctors, nurses and all the people who involved who have helped me to stop leaking.”
Prevention is the only way to end fistula. Improving quality access to maternal health care could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women who die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth in Nigeria and around the world.
With the help and donations from organisations such as Richard Branson’s, Virgin Unite, UNFPA can help train more doctors in how to treat fistulas and can maybe one day win their fight against this condition, saving millions of women and their children and giving them their lives back.
