By Godwin Igber
As Nigeria joins the international community to celebrate the 2025 International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, medical experts have urged pregnant women to seek proper medical attention to avoid complicated labour.
They also called on the government and relevant organizations to provide access to emergency obstetric care, while creating awareness on risk factors such as child marriage, early childbearing, and the lack of skilled medical staff at the maternity unit and primary healthcare centers across the country.
Speaking on Friday in Makurdi, the Benue State Capital, Usha Anenga, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with the Benue State University Teaching Hospital Makurdi, emphasized the need for pregnant women to avail themselves for antenatal care and deliver at the hospital to avoid issues of prolonged labour, describing it one of the major causes of obstetric fistula.
He further lamented on the deplorable condition of women that labour at home without the supervision of trained health professionals, noting that quacks have contributed to the suffering of affected women.
“When the labor is not managed properly and then at the end of the day, there is this prolonged obstructed labor and it causes a lot of problems. Obstetric Fistula causes a lot of discomfort for women in terms of psychological and physical stigmatization”. He said.
Anenga also called on the government and non-governmental organizations to increase the funding of healthcare services, create awareness, and carry out training to enable pregnant women seek proper medical attention as at when due to physical, social and psychological consequences of the condition.
“This way, a pregnant woman doesn’t have to travel four hours before she can access proper healthcare during labour and so healthcare services should be available, affordable, and accessible in remote communities,” he said.
Also commenting, another medical doctor, Esther Gbayan in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi, said both the direct and indirect causes of Obstetric Fistula such as prolonged neglected labour, poverty, lack of education, limited access to health facilities and lack of skilled birth attendants should be given consideration especially in the remote villages.
“They are factors that cause prolonged labour. If there is a skilled attendant who can pick complications at its earliest form and then refer, some of these things can be mitigated.”
She further reiterated the preventive mechanisms of the condition such as antenatal care, giving birth at the hospital, advocacy on girl child education and women empowerment. She also called on health workers in Benue State to champion the fight against Obstetric Fistula.
The International Day to End Obstetric Fistula was first observed on 23rd May, 2013 to raise awareness about the plight of women and girls living with fistula and to promote access to quality maternal health services.
The 2025 theme for the celebration is tagged: Her health, her right: Shaping a future without fistula, which is aimed at highlighting the fundamental right of women and girls to sexual and reproductive health while calling for a future where fistula is eradicated in the society.
