JUST ANOTHER GIRL WITH A STICK IN HER PRIVATE PARTS

Termination of pregnancy is a thorny subject until you see a 23 year old girl with a stick in her private parts, on her dying bed.You just know that this should not have happened. No matter what.Someone’s sister, someone’s child. It could have been my daughter, your child.

With termination of pregnancy legalized as early as 1972 in Zambia ,and so many ways to prevent pregnancy , so many contraceptive methods,it is shocking that women still continue to come to our hospitals and clinics with cassava sticks in their vagina and end up dying.

What is the real problem ?

Is it because our women can not come in the open and ask for these services ?Is it because of stigma ? The fear that if they came to the hospital, people would find out ?Is it that the community is unaware of the availability of these services? Is it the lack of skills or lack of a friendly environment in our hospitals that women shun these services in facilities ?These are questions that must be answered.

It is hard to understand why a woman in this day and age would come to a health facility, having lost gallons of blood trying to remove a pregnancy, at home, in a toilet. This needs to come to end. Sooner rather than later.

The Corvid 19 epidemic has taught us how information can easily be spread around the globe in a matter of hours , minutes even seconds. It has taught us how human behavior can be changed easily if only we tried and if only we all believed there is a problem.

My grandmother who is illiterate by the way, knows the structure of the Coronavirus, it’s transmission and that there is no cure. She is an expert in the treatment of COVID 19 and it’s prevention .

The girl who appeared at the hospital with a stick in her vagina, however, did not know that having unsafe abortion is illegal and would land her in jail for years. She had no clue that there was a termination of pregnancy act of 1972 in Zambia . She did not know that a walk into a government facility and a request for a termination of pregnancy could have saved her life.

This was a tragedy. A very painful maternal death in the 21st century.