The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Health activists are calling for the effectiveness of health management units amidst mishandling of patients especially pregnant mothers by health workers.
Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released results of a study done in some four countries in Africa and Asia.
According to WHO, many women still go through a lot of mistreatment at delivery which include verbal abuse, physical abuse, non-consensual cesarean sections, vaginal examinations and episiotomies – cuts at the opening of the vagina to enlarge the passage.
While the organization notes that women should make informed choice and their dignity is respected at that time, rights advocates in Uganda say the findings in the countries considered in the WHO study are quite similar with what is happening here.
Moses Kirigwajjo Nsaine a programs officer with the national health consumers organization said mothers, especially in rural Uganda, are not empowered enough to choose what happens to them at delivery.
He said many are not told even verbally when a decision to an episiotomy is made.
However, Dr Rosette Namulindwa, a specialist obstetrician/ gynaecologist at Mulago Specialized Women’s and Neonatal hospital said there’s no time to ask for consent because, at the time, a health worker has to make a quick decision to save the baby and mother.
She also says that having written consent for an episiotomy is unrealistic.
According to Namulindwa, while other abuses that women endure such as slaps and verbal abuses can be handled at the hospital level through petitioning hospital management or through logging in a complaint at the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council, a woman who undergoes an unconsented too C Section should sue the concerned doctor.
Mable Musinguzi has never recovered from the trauma she underwent when she went to deliver at Lyantonde General Hospital. She says she almost lost her baby and yet not being a first-time mother, she never imagined any challenges because her previous delivery was safe.
The delays didn’t only get her a tear and a cut in her perineum – between her vagina and anus and some stitching to correct what had gone wrong.
Musinguzi who is also a patient rights activist says at no point did health workers ask for her consent to do any of the procedures.
But, activists say Namulindwa’s proposal can only work for the elite who rarely suffer these challenges because they most times pay for their health services. For them, what seemed to work previously were hospital management committees where people would be able to report through hospital suggestion boxes and action would be taken, but then they also stopped because the same health workers became members of these committees.
Kirigwajjo says what they are establishing in communities is that people are more comfortable complaining to political leaders than hospital management.
In absence of these, both Musinguzi and Kirigwajjo say women need to be empowered to be able to speak out when they are violated.
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