‘How childbirth depreciates women’s health’

A consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist (O&G), Prof. Etedafe Prosper Gharoro, has said childbirth is the most important factor that depreciates women’s health.

Gharoro made the remark penultimate Thursday while delivering the 219th Inaugural lecture of the University of Benin titled, “The Earth, The Population and The Divine Injunction: A celebration of Women’s Reproductive Health.”

The don opined that these burdens have to be borne by women in order to reproduce and keep the world population from becoming extinct. “Childbirth is the most important factor that depreciates women’s health. These ill-effects are more in countries with resource constrain, they are avoidable or could be ameliorated and /or modified through the appropriate deployment of Knowledge and simple technologies available in these resource poor settings,” Gharoro said.

Describing the reproductive age of the woman as between 15-45 years, Gharoro noted that at 15, the human female specie is physically ready to accept and function as a reproductive being. According to him, “she is at ‘dawn’ of her reproductive career, which will span the next 30 plus years of her life. She will perform the task under grave circumstances and ‘pains of childbirth’.” Gharoro explained that in contemporary obstetrics practice, the ‘pains in childbirth’ are associated with maternal mortality and morbidity, which according to him is not just the physiological pains during labour and delivery but encompasses the pains of maternity and motherhood. He added that the risk factors associated with women’s reproductive health are grouped into mainly, the major risk involved in giving birth: obstetrics (midwifery) and diseases of the reproductive organs: gynaecology. “At the UBTH the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) in the last two decades, has been on the rise from 589/100,000 to 1020/100,000 live birth. For every woman that dies several women (10-20) sustain life-threatening injuries (Near-Miss). The most severe of these injuries is Vesico-Vaginal Fistula (VVF) formation. These burden have to be borne by women, in order to reproduce and keep the world population from becoming extinct,” Gharoro said.