The frightening truth of being a Ghanaian woman

The frightening truth of being a Ghanaian woman

Or a woman anywhere in the developing world for that matter. Today my office mate was talking about doctors and medical care in Ghana. He and his family live in the North Eastern Region and are a three hour drive from a hospital and anything like formal healthcare… Except his story makes you wonder. His wife was in labour 4 days and it was clear that there was a serious problem. The attending doctor (I don’t know if he was a specialist of any kind but it seems not) refused to call in the surgeon to do a Caesarian. The child ended up dying in utero and only then did they perform a Caesarian section to remove the little corpse. Then, to add insult to injury, the grieving parents were expected by custom to provide a “gift” to the physician that was responsible for this untold suffering. This is the story of educated people (lawyer and teacher) with the financial means to pay for health care.

The paper made much recently, of the Minister of Health who has agreed to provide funding for 100 women to have their fistulas repaired. A hundred women, who suffer from the unnecessary ripping and tearing that is too frequently the result of giving birth without appropriate healthcare. I’m not being critical of traditional midwifery here. There are hundreds of villages without midwives either, especially in the north of Ghana. And the results for women who are maimed in childbirth? Not sympathy. Rather they are frequently ostracized  by neighbours and driven out of their homes but relatives revolted by their oozing, stinking bodies.

Any wonder there is a television show to inform women that they don’t have to die in childbirth? Too bad it isn’t available in the north where the majority of deaths and fistulas from unattended births occur.