A Finland-based professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, fiKelsey Harrison, has said that anti-malarial and antianaemia drugs may prevent vesico vaginal fistula, a disease that is common among underage girls in Africa.
Harrison said this during a lecture titled, We reap what we sow' at the University of Medical Sciences in Ondo, Ondo State,
He said, "We reasoned that if the growth-enhancing effect of anti-malarial and anti-anaemia drugs is confirmed, it can become a way of preventing VVF among underage girls in Nigeria. "
According to him, VVF is a disease afflicting teenage mothers in Northern Nigerian, especially-in places where early marriage of young girls is a common traditional practice. Harrison stated, ''Teenage mothers, who are less than 1.5 meters tall, are the most vulnerable to VVF. It is caused by prolonged obstructed labour whose underlying factor can be traced to the exceedingly harsh condition under which these girls were brought up."
The renowned obstetrician identified poverty, lack of formal education, adverse cultural, ethnic and religious influences, as well as inadequate physical infrastructure as social factors that encourage teenage pregnancy in the North.
To ensure maternal survival during pregnancy and childbirth, he noted, the living condition of the mothers must be improved, while pregnant women must receive basic ante and post natal care.
"Measures must be taken to ensure that pregnant women who develop life-threatening complication get effective treatment if necessary, operative interventions, before it is too late," Harrison warned.
By: Peter Dada
The Punch News
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