Curable disease deemed terminal

The condition is ‘very preventable’ if patients are not embarrassed.

KARACHI:

“Every minute, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, which is a cause and a consequence of obstetric fistula,” said a young gynaecology student, Samia Hussain, quoting from the World Health Organisation Press. The condition which is “very preventable” was discussed on the second day of the Regional Fistula Conference on Saturday.

Saying that 300 million women suffer either short- or long-term pregnancy complications, Hamdard University senior registrar Erum Khalid urged the medical community “to do something about fistula now as it is a very preventable and curable.”

Meanwhile, Dr Nasreen Ruby Faiz, a consultant gynecologist from Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, said people had become aware of fistulas and its cure. “But everything changed for us after September 2001,” she said.

A blind fistula patient, Nawaba Bibi, attended the conference. She developed fistula when she went for an operation to remove her uterus. After the surgery, Nawaba Bibi had no control over her urine and after a consultation, she was diagnosed with urinary tract fistula. “She used to say she wanted to die and I feared she might commit suicide so I took her to another doctor,” said her brother, Mukkarram Khan. After the fistula was removed, Nawaba was relieved. “I prefer blindness to having fistula. No one can understand what I went through,” she said.

Meanwhile, Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, head of gynecology Dr Pushpa Shrichand said most patients suffer from depression. Their husbands leave them and many are isolated in a room, away from their children and family. She has interviewed 171 fistula patients in the last six months and most of them were suffering from dehydration because to avoid urinating in public, the women stopped drinking water.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2011.