23 July 2008
Abuse in Kenya maternal wards
Since we are on the "women in Africa" unit I thought this would be a great blog. For the past 20 years Joyce Atieno, 38, has been getting out of bed at various times during the night or day to deliver another baby into the world. She lives in Nairobi, Kenya. In a city that's full of "predatory quacks and counterfeit pharmaceuticals," Atieno is a trained birth attendant who has been giving her services for free. Recently, however, she no longer provides her free service. This recent change has stemmed from violence against women in labor by Kenya's health care facilities. Though there are rumors of many scandals and numerous investigations there has been no improvement in Kenya's healthcare system. In 2006 a patient was turned away because she did not have the $45 required for admission. The mother was then referred to a private clinic who again turned her away for lack of money. Atieno assisted in the birth and attempted to tie the placenta shockingly with a piece of twine retrieved from the gutter. Unfortunately it was too late and both mother and baby died. Joyce Atieno's opposition to the Kenya's healthcare system grew when the next incident hit too close to home. Later this same year Atieno's 25 year old daughter died on the doorstep of a public health facility where her husband worked. The excuse was that the facility was unable to handle her daughter's complications and the ambulance was out of gas. In another case a male clinician who was supposed to be stitching up a women who had received a tear during birth instead took a pair of scissors and genitally mutilated the female patient. The male clinician was investigated but the case was dismissed for lack of sufficient grounds. Genital mutilation was outlawed in 2001 but it still practiced and little is done to completely stop it. According to the World Health Organization, of the 536,000 deaths caused by maternal complications, 533,000 of those deaths occur in sub-saharan Africa. The problem is that many African countries lack the funding and health facilities to provide care for pregnant women. Hope is still to come because Kenya will receive $500 million in health aid from the Uniteds States this year.
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6 comments:
This is so sad! In addition, at the women's leadership conference at Clemson this spring, I learned from the keynote speaker of other issues these women face. Women will end up on there own trying to give birth and frequently the baby gets stuck. Then the mother has to wait until the baby dies and starts to decay until she is able to deliver her dead child. In this process and even with live births the wall between the vagina and the urethra or the vagina and the anus will tear causing waste to seep out of the woman. When this happens the women will be ostracized from society. This is another heartbreaking disgusting situation that doesn't need to exist and could be solved with better clinics.
Not sure better clinics is the answer. The clinics need to be inspected and guidelines setup and followed. By not having guidelines to follow or being enforced, women will continue to be turned away and children will continue to die needlessly.
Until society accepts women as equals, their life and that of their unborn child has no value.
I don't understand how people can inflict such pain and suffering on their own people. How are we to help? How do we not appear as "westerners" trying to impose our beliefs?
This is very disturbing! I did not know that this still went on. But, now that I think about it, most of the third world countries are facing the same situations. In India, majority of villages still do not have clinics and most of the people do not even think to visit the hospital. Plus, the hospitals are often cities away and require transportation that the villagers often lack. It is custom for a woman to be at her parents' house during the last few months of her first pregnancy. So, whatever service the parents can provide is the one that the woman is stuck with.
I to agree that this is so sad and so very disturbing. I do not know if anyone has read our questions that we posted for Women in Africa in the discussion board but I have a friend that works very closely with AIDS patients in Kenya. He is in the Peace Corps and he has told me the horrors of how people are treated in Kenya. It is just so upsetting that this happens not only with AIDS patients but with all aspects of healthcare in Africa. I feel like the US and other icher countries need to step in and help these poor people get healthcare that everyone deserves. It is unnatural for there to be so many female and child fatalities in this day in age.
Wow Beth, that is new information to me. I had never heard of any of those horrors that women in Kenya have to face. I have had friends who have done mission work in Kenya at clinics like this, but never have they talked of such terrible events. It seems like these things probably do occur in almost every third-world country. It is definitely time for the more wealthy countries of the world to step in and help these women out. Honestly though, I think nothing will really be done until the women in these countries are seen as equals by their male dominated governments. It is so sad to think of all the nice facilities we have in the US yet so many women throughout the world suffer daily.
Of course, many women in the US suffer as well, especially when they are without health insurance, and thus are unable to access appropriate health care. We certainly have countless advantages in the US, but we have problems, too.
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