150,000 Girls Suffering from VVF
VVF implies Vesico Vaginal Fistula this occurs when there is a hole between the bladder and the the vagina and it symptoms include uncontrollable discharge of urine and feaces after childbirth. The cause of this disease have been attributed to prolonged labor during childbirth and hard to birth pregnancies especially in under aged girls.The great damage this disease does cannot be overemphasized, it strips the victim of her live and makes life totally redundant and meaningless for them. Many researches and writers have attributed the thrive of these disease to early marriages and obnoxious religious beliefs that a pregnant woman should not seek care from the hospital, particularly in the northern region and some parts of the south -east region in Nigeria.
in his write up for PressReader noted that while there have been several awareness created to stifle this issue, VVF is on the rise especially in rural areas where they have little or no access to proper health treatment , he recounted the story of 2 girls one in Ebony state and the other in Kaduna State, who have now been outcast-ed by their people because of the odor they ooze from suffering from VVF. He noted that, Dr Suleiman Zakari, the Clinical Associate of Fistula Care Plus elucidated that 150,000 girls are living with VVF and the irony of it is that there are inadequate trained personnel and medical facilities to take care of them all.
Recently, it was reported that Ebonyi state have over 12,000 girls living with VVF. Although much has been done to try to curtail this mayhem and provide sensitization against early marriages , new cases seem to have arisen and there is an outcry from the neglected girls. The continuous cause of this is not far-fetched; poverty, lack of education, early marriages, lack of proper attention during pregnancies are often the cause of this disease.What can you do? You can encourage pregnant women and girls around you to go for proper medical attention, you can discourage the following of obnoxious cultural and religious practices that supports early marriage, you can also encourage the education of a girl-child.
