Right To Reproductive Health: The Woman’s Challenge

One of the basic joy of
a wife is that of motherhood. Unfortunately,  a lot of factors had over the years militated  against the flow of this joy resulting to mixed feelings of whether or not  to be in the comity of mothers.
A major factor is the deteriorating state of the woman’s reproductive health occasioned by continued ignorance of a higher populace of women on their rights to such health. This ignorant state has over the  period resulted to the woman’s unhealthy physical, social, mental and educational condition which by extension, has over affected families and society at large.
Maternal Morality or death, the death of a woman when pregnant  and in the process of delivery  has remained a significant  outcome of the challenge to motherhood, which has not only constituted a major means of death of most expectant mothers but  maintained  the state of phobia  in such a woman around the world.
Considering the place of the woman/mother in the posterity and well-being of the home, there is the need for her life to be sustained. To this end, the Nigerian Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), in conjunction with IPAS has again rise to the challenge of ensuring that the  woman’s  life is safe in  this regard.
In a one-day community mobilisation/sensitisation/Town Hall meeting on  Reproductive Health with emphasis  on Post Abortion Care and Family Planning for (PHALGA), Rivers State, NAWOJ/IPAS revealed  that women have the right to reproductive health thereby saving their lives not only from unhealthy  state but untimely deaths.
Against the background that the woman in this part of the World has little or no right of her  own in determining certain issues especially regarding childbearing and or number of children to give births to, it has become obvious that such tenet is a subtle means of the porous unhealthy state of her reproductive health.
Reproductive Health Right of the woman is the knowledge and ability of the woman challenge unhealthy reproductive steps that are capable of endangering her life particularly, that of unwanted pregnancy.
The awareness programme which had female participants drawn from different local government  areas, female organisations, health ministries and health related non-governental organisations ( NGOs) revealed that the woman has the right to boldly walk up to any equipped health facility and demand  for her right, specially of safe abortion in order to save her life.
Following the challenges of childbearing and training in modern times, it has become pertinent to check the level of pregnancy intake which is achieved through family planning methods and  IPAs, an association which focuses on the health, rights, and access of women is of the view that a woman is supposed to know when to get pregnant and when not to and if the latter becomes the case, abortion remains the last  resort and she has the right to a safe one.
In her lecture on community mobilisation, and sensitisation on Reproductive Health, the Co-ordinate, Safe Motherhood, Public Health Department, Rivers State Ministry of Health, Mrs. Mikai T.K. Amachree noted that  nearly all unsafe  abortions ranging to about 98 per cent occur in developing countries of which Nigeria is one stating that in almost all developed countries, safe abortions are legally available upon request or under broad social  and economic grounds and services are generally easily accessible and available.
Represented by the  Ministries  Co-ordinator, RHIFP, Mrs. Joyce Amaewhule, Amachree said  that in countries where  induced abortion is legally highly restricted  and or unavailable, safe abortion has frequently become the privilege of the rich while  poor women have little  or no choice but  to resort to unsafe providers, causing deaths and morbidities  that become the social and financial responsibility of the public health system.
“Over the past two decades, the health evidence, technologies and human rights rationale for providing safe, comprehensive  abortion care have revolved around greatly and despite  these advances, on estimated 22 million unsafe abortions continue to occur every year resulting in the death of an estimated 47,000 women and disabilities  for another five million women” she said.
While noting that almost all the deaths and disabilities could have been prevented through sexuality education, family planning and the provision of safe,  legal induced abortion and care for  complication of abortion, Amachree maintained that in an induced or spontaneous abortion, women should receive appropriate post-abortion care.
According to her “for those women who abortions were performed unsafely, post abortion is used as strategy to attenuate the morbidity and mortality associated with complications including uterine aspiration for incomplete abortion and offer of contraceptives to prevent future unintended  pregnancies.”
Gynecologist and Representative, First Land  Hospital, Abia State, Dr. Okechi Ajaero noted that  the millennium development Goals (MDGs), number five, focuses on improving maternal health by 2015 adding that with the date at the corner, all hands must be on deck to checkmate the occurrence.
Describing the programme as timely, Ajaero decried the increasing rate of maternal deaths, stating however, that this could  be prevented when knowledge and care are placed side by side.
Ajaero  averred that women in the rural areas are more exposed to the process of unsafe abortions due largely to absence of qualified medical personnel  and adequate medical facilities.
“A lot of doctors have been concentrated in the urban  areas at the expense of the rural areas leaving these women  and young girls whose Pelvics  and cervix  are sometimes not well developed, at the mercy of  quacks and facilities with minimal  medical standard”, he stated.
Maintaining that abortion is a choice, Ajaero stressed the need for mothers/women to prevent unwanted pregnancies by  taking up a family planning method saying “if there must be abortion, then it must be  safe and adequate post care administered accordingly”.
Although it may sound awkward in the ears of some women and mothers in this part of the world, the fact remains that women are faced  daily with the risk of maternal death and it has become imperative for them to stand tall,  uphold their rights and safe their lives.
There are a number  of policies  with implication for maternal health service provision, such as the national health policy that has set maternal and reproductive health care as one of the priority  areas with reduction of maternal  morbidity  and mortality as major expected outcomes and safe motherhood as a key element in the minimum health care package.
More appealing is that the Rivers State House of Assembly in 2003, passed a law legalising  safe  abortion in designated health centres across the state, thus, a call on Rivers  and ofcourse, women resident in the state to avail themselves of the opportunity of utilising  these reproductive health services available in health facilities of the state in order that the universal access to reproductive health by 2015, barely the  next five of months becomes a reality.

Lady Godknows Ogbulu

Wife of the Deputy Clerk, Rivers State House of Assembly, Mrs Theresa Dumnu (left), conferring with wife of Head, News, RSTV, Mrs Edina Chu, during the thanksgiving and dedication of the twin children of the former in Port Harcourt last Sunday. Photo: Chris Monyanaga