Agony of VVF patients

Amina Mohammed is a housewife, who hails from Jahun in Bauchi State. She would have committed suicide as a result of an ailment known as Vesicular Virginal Fistula (VVF). She has been battling with the condition in which there has been uncontrollable leakage of urine from her bladder for the past five years.

In an encounter with Daily Sun in Ningi, about 100 kilometres to Bauchi, she betrayed emotion as she narrated her bitter experience. She said the pain and shame associated with the VVF have become unbearable for her.
The distraught housewife’s woes were compounded when her husband abandoned her after she contracted the VVF. She declared that she was so depressed and felt out of control with the situation that she contemplated committing suicide, saying: “I wanted to end the suffering. It was too much for me to take.”

But she has not actualised the suicide mission before help came her way. Amina currently receives treatment at the newly established VVF Centre in Ningi. Daily Sun met her and her father at the centre. She said: “I hope that God will heal me in this place because I have suffered a lot. And I really appreciate the assistance and pray that God will reward them.”

Dr Mansur Mustapha Dada, Medical Officer in charge of the General Hospital, Ningi, where the VVF Centre is located, said VVF is caused by prolonged obstructed labour, adding that over 2, 000 women are estimated to be currently living with the condition in the state.“The leakage is accompanied by a smell. The smell often leads to social isolation because in most cases everybody, including relatives, keeps away from the victims because of the smell. This can lead to depression in the victim,” he added.

Amina, a 30-year-old mother of four from Jahun in Bauchi Metropolis developed VVF after she was admitted at the Specialist Hospital Bauchi for child delivery about five years ago. She told Daily Sun: “I had a very difficult labour. It was the most difficult one I ever experienced. Unfortunately, I lost the baby and shortly after that I developed VVF.” She left the hospital a sad woman and little did she know that the situation she went through had marked the beginning of her trauma. Shortly thereafter, she realised that urine couldn’t stop coming from her bladder and the smell around her became unbearable.

Amina said she told her husband, Dahiru, about her predicament but rather than being supportive, her heartthrob sent her back to her father’s house. With tears, she said: “When my husband discovered the problem, he divorced me. I was forced to go to my parents’ house and they accepted me but life has not been easy for me. I have been suffering with this disease since then because I have been at home doing nothing.” It was not only her husband that abandoned her. Her friends and some close family members have started deserting her one after the other.

Many women, like Amina, go through the harrowing experience of living with VVF, with some carrying the burden for decades. One of such women is a 60-year-old widow, Hajara Ussinei, from Tabula village in Ningi Local Government Area of the state. The mother of six told Daily Sun at the VVF Centre that she developed VVF about 20 years ago. “It has not been easy. I have been at home suffering from it before my husband died seven years ago. My children are the ones supporting me but life has been very hard,” she maintained.

The VVF Centre was established recently at the General Hospital, Ningi and Medical Officer in charge of the hospital. Dr. Dada, promised that the centre would bring succour to women suffering from VVF.
He stated that the centre was established by the USAID sponsored Fistula Care, a non-governmental organisation working assiduously to carry out repairs on VVF patients. He explained that the state government signed an agreement with Fistula Care project to site the VVF Centre at the Ningi General Hospital.

The centre, according to Dada, started with training of healthcare providers on management and surgery of VVF. He stated that four of the staff were trained at the Federal Medical Centres, Birni Kebbi and Sokoto.
While saying that the Fistula Care in collaboration with stakeholders carried out mass repairs on VVF patients recently, he disclosed that the centre currently has 50-capacity bed facilities for patients. He said awareness was being created through the media for VVF patients to take advantage of the services.
His words: “Most of the patients on admission presently are from Bauchi, Ningi, Ganjuwa and a few from Misau Local Governments. VVF is a spectrum of defects that ranges from small to complex. The ones that have minor defects are easily repaired. The ones with complex defects have to undergo more than one surgery.

“If the patients are repaired and there are problems, we keep them until the operation is successful and we discharged them.” Assistant Country Director of Fistula Care, Dr Adamu Isa, said at a recent workshop in Bauchi that VVF is developed by women or girls of poor socio-economic background. He warned that uneducated women living in the villages are also prone to the condition while factors such as ignorance, poverty and poor attitude of health workers can promote fistula.

He, however, punctured the myth that VVF is caused by early marriage, saying early marriage could only expose women to VVF. He disclosed that 20, 000 to 50, 000 new cases of fistula occur every year in Nigeria. He revealed that the FMOH puts the backlog of fistula clients at between 800, 000 and one million.
Isa lamented that the centre has only about 200 doctors that can carry out surgical operations to repair the damaged bladder or rectum as the case may be. The number, according to him, was grossly inadequate to cater for the backlog of 800, 000 and one million VVF patients in the country.

He revealed that an estimated 4, 000 doctors were required yearly to carry out repairs on fistula patients in the country and it would probably take the country about 150 years to clear the backlog. Prevention, repair, rehabilitation, advocacy and research are the ways out of the problem, Isa said. He stated that Fistula Care, with funding from USAID, has blazed the trail in that direction. In his words, since 2007 when they arrived the country, it has trained more than 50, 000 doctors and nurses to manage both pre-operative and post-operative fistula cases.

Isa further asserted that close to 5, 000 women have been treated and supported in Kano, Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Ebonyi, Sokoto and Bauchi States where the Fistula Care operates. He submitted that VVF centres in the country have been renovated and well-equipped, adding that there is a Fistula Task Force established in each states of the federation and National Obstetric Fistula Working Group at the National Level.

Posted: at 28-04-2011 10:24 AM (12 years ago) | Gistmaniac

*falls asleep while reading*

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Posted: at 28-04-2011 01:09 PM (12 years ago) | Gistmaniac

I've been to Ningi before, n i can say with all amount of certainty that there are a lot of women suffering from this ailment, who will rather remain with this disease than seek medical help in the hospital. I pray they make good this opportunity n live a hassle-free life.

Posted: at 28-04-2011 02:09 PM (12 years ago) | Upcoming