Aisha

25 year old Aisha from Dodoma went into labour with her second child at home. The baby was full term and there had been no complications during the pregnancy. After a day of contractions at her home and with no pain relief, Aisha made her way to the local dispensary where she spent another twelve hours in labour. Finally, the baby was delivered by vacuum extraction. It was a breech birth and the infant girl was stillborn. With no adequate mother child health care in the vicinity, a caesarean section – which could have saved the child’s life – was not an option. Aisha was sent home from the dispensary that same day.

Five days after the delivery, Aisha noticed she was leaking urine uncontrollably. The prolonged labour had caused a hole to develop between the bladder and the vagina; a disability called Vesico-Vaginal Fistula. Aisha and her husband are subsistence farmers living on approximately one dollar a day so it took time to save up money for transport and medical treatment. After several months she went to her local clinic, from there she was sent to a hospital which then referred her to CCBRT. Of the intervening months she says, “I had to wash myself all the time. I tried to keep looking after my five year old and my family. It was really hard to keep myself clean and I didn’t want to use up all the water for the family on myself.” Many women with this condition in Tanzania find themselves ostracized by their communities because of the offensive odour but Aisha’s husband and family supported her.

The doctors at CCBRT found she had a hole in the bladder near the urethra and a second one close to the cervix. Three weeks after her double fistula operation at CCBRT, the catheter was removed, the leaking had stopped and Aisha returned home relieved and happy to be ‘back to normal’.