By Judd-Leonard Okafor
Health minister Isaac Adewole returned to the operating room on Thursday, joining surgeons to repair women living with fistula.
The surgery is part of a pooled effort by the US-funded Fistula Care Plus ongoing at Wesley Guild Hospital, Ilesa, to bring repair surgeons to women living with the condition for years and unable to seek repair.
A record 33 women, including many from states outside Osun, were listed for surgical repairs by Monday—and more turned up for screening through the week.
Their numbers surpass the two 14-bed wards Wesley Guild management have dedicated as its obstetric fistula unit.
Adewole had earlier expressed interest in taking part in the surgeries, insisting he would not mind operating when the pooled effort was afoot.
On Thursday, he declared it open, toured the wards to meet with women who had gone repairs since Monday, and donned surgical scrubs to begin surgical repair on a client who had lived with obstetric fistula for years.
Out of an estimated 12,000 women living with the condition each year, only around 5,000 get repaired, leaving nearly 7,000 in yearly backlog Adewole said, adding that work must continue to clear.
He added that Wesley would be declared a federal medical centre to enable it meet the challenge of more repairs in future.
Around a dozen centres are dedicated to repair fistulas around the country. In major teaching hospitals, routine repairs are expensive and not adequate to clear the backlog.
“Each time we talk about it, there are states that have not received any support for fistula and are not involved in it at all,” says Iyeme Efem, country project manager for Engender Health, which implements the USAID-funded care.
“And when you ask officials of those states, they will tell you ‘there are no fistula cases in our state’. I ask, do you have the best health services in the world. If your answer is no, then certainly there are fistula cases. It is just that you don’t see them, you don’t look for them.”
Efem emphasised, “When we say there is fistula everywhere in Nigeria, people say no. we have been living in denial.”
The turnout suggests many cases of fistula are hidden in the south of the country and the condition is prevalent there as much as it has been thought to be a predominantly northern problem.
“We have been doing these operations but not at this magnitude,” said Victor Adetiloye, chief medical director at Wesley Guild, which does around two routine repairs a month.
“Even if this is completed at the end of the week, more people will be coming. So we cannot stop.”
Obstetric fistulas are abnormal holes in the bladder or rectum, resulting from prolonged, obstructed labour.
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