FCT PHC intensifies efforts to end obstetric fistula in the territory 

FAVOUR ISHEMBER, Abuja

The FCT primary healthcare has expressed its determination to collaborate with relevant stakeholders towards ending the scourge of vesicovaginal fistula in the territory. 

The Director of Healthcare of the FCT Primary Health Care Board, Dr Rukayat Wamako disclosed this on Wednesday at the launch of the Comprehensive and Inclusive Women’s Health in Nigeria. 

Wamako who expressed concerns over the alarming number of women battling with fistula, especially at the grassroots areas of the territory, explained that the situation is further compounded by the reluctance of the women to willingly submit themselves for treatment due to the stigma attached to the condition. 

Wamako noted that the FCT Primary Health board has been collaborating with a non-profit organisation, Survive Fistula Healthcare Foundation for the past three years to identify people with fistula in grassroots areas in order to eradicate the obstetric fistula. 

“The Survive Fistula Healthcare Foundation has been doing a lot in FCT in collaboration with Hospital Management Board, Health and Human Services Secretariat, as well as FCT Primary Health Care Board; they are closer to the Health Care Board because they’re working at the grassroots and we’re closer to the grassroots people, we work with the grassroots people. 

“We are here to unveil the second phase of Survive Fistula Healthcare Foundation. We have worked with them in the past as our partners in the last three years the project now rounded up and they’re coming back for the second phase to do more in the FCT on the issue of identifying with fistula and then having fistula repairs in our hospitals. 

“We identify Kwali general hospital as our referral hospital where we do repairs for fistula tissues and sometimes they even bring people from different states to FCT to have fistula surgery.

“If you look at the far northern states, sometimes because of early marriage, the fistula cases are higher on that side and they queue for the surgery and sometimes because we have less in the FCT, they use to bring them here to have the surgery and the Survive Fistula Foundation takes 100% care of those people. 

“Today we’re unveiling the second phase of Survive Fistula Healthcare Foundation coming back the second time to work in FCT, AMAC, Gwagwalada and Kuje where they’re going to work with people with disability and then people at the grassroots.

“We also realised that there are people in the community who are having fistula and are not able to come out because of the social stigma associated with it. So this one has a long way by going deep into the community to tease out these people, refer them and channel them to where they want to go and then be able to sustain surgery.

“And then we at the Primary Healthcare level after the surgery, we will try as much as we can to see that even if they are back into their home, we will rehabilitate them back into the community and absorb them into the community as well as getting back into their husband’s houses. 

“This will be with serious orientation for the family. If she becomes pregnant, then she will now come back to deliver by Cesarian section because we don’t want any things to pass through the place because of the surgery and get back to the community and we allow that same person to have postnatal family planning that will suit them so that the place and the organ and everything there will rest over a period of time before she goes for another one again.” 

For her part, the Executive Director of Survive Fistula Healthcare Foundation Peters Ogunmiyan said prior to the intervention of the Foundation, there was no obstetric fistula repairs programme that would take care of people with the condition. 

She added that the Foundation had carried out 2000 fistula repairs on women across the six area councils and has in total, affected over 3000 lives. 

She stated that the launch of the Comprehensive and Inclusive Women’s Health in Nigeria is a four years programme targeted at strengthening the health system, training healthcare providers to provide quality healthcare services as well as people with disability and fistula repairs.