For many expectant mothers, the labour room signifies a gateway to bliss, heralded by the first cry of a newborn. But for Bassy (not her real name), that moment marked the beginning of a nightmare spanning two decades.
Twenty years ago, Bassy entered a prominent hospital in Accra to deliver her first child. She was full of hope, eager to embrace motherhood. However, complications during childbirth left her with obstetric fistula—a devastating condition that stole her dignity, livelihood, and marriage.
The ordeal began when Bassy attempted to deliver her 4.5kg baby naturally. Despite the baby’s size, she wasn’t advised to opt for a cesarean section, popularly known as CS. During the prolonged and obstructed labour, she suffered a fourth-degree tear—a severe injury extending into the rectum.
“I was young and unaware of the risks,” Bassy lamented. “After delivery, they told me the tear was too severe to be sutured immediately and that I needed a specialist.”
Delayed medical intervention compounded her condition. By the time a doctor attended to her, the repair attempt had failed. Over the years, multiple surgeries—each more hopeful than the last—ended in disappointment.
The cost of treatment drained Bassy’s finances. With each failed surgery, her hope dwindled, and the stigma of her condition isolated her from friends and family. “I couldn’t work or socialise because of the constant stench,” she revealed.
Her marriage also crumbled under the weight of mounting medical bills and unfulfilled promises of recovery. “My husband eventually gave up, and I was left to fend for myself,” she recounted.
Could it have been prevented?
For her, the medical team that attended to her during labour could have saved her from the condition if they had informed her about the size of the baby.
“Nobody told me that the baby was that big and that I could not deliver because I was young,” she said, blaming the nurses for negligence.
“I spent the whole day in the hospital, and they didn’t get a doctor until the next morning,” Bassy explained, adding that she delivered her baby around 12 p.m. but had to wait until the following day before a medical doctor could attend to her. Even then, they could not fix the tear.
According to her, after the first repair broke down, she went home to gather some money for another. After the second repair, it broke down again. Considering the cost involved in each surgery, she had to stay home for some years to gather more money in order to attempt the surgery at a different hospital. Unfortunately for her, that one also failed.
“I couldn’t get any doctor who could do it very well for me,” Bassy said, adding, “After the repairs, you will find out that there are leakages all over.”
She said the condition “got her stuck” as she could not do much for herself, stressing, “Where can you go with such stench? I was just hanging around, always looking for where to go next and looking for money to do another repair.”
Desperate efforts
She shared that she also visited Tema General Hospital but was informed that the surgery could not be performed there. Consequently, she was referred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.
As Bassy recounted, during her time at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, the doctor assigned to perform her surgery suggested it be done at his private facility instead. Desperate for a solution, she agreed. Sadly, the fourth surgery also failed, leaving her condition unresolved.
Following the fourth surgery, Bassy began experiencing severe abdominal pain, prompting her to return to the private facility for another procedure. It was during this subsequent surgery that the doctors discovered a foreign object had been left in her abdomen during the earlier operation. This oversight left her unable to urinate or pass fecal matter. “I was in excruciating pain,” she narrated.
Legal actions
When questioned about taking legal action against the health facility responsible for leaving something in her abdomen during surgery, Bassy said she did not.
“How could I pursue legal action? At that point, what evidence did I have? They could see what they had done; they knew exactly what was going on. All I could do was pray and hope to recover,” she explained.
She revealed that it took nearly five years after the fourth incident before she could afford another surgery. After painstakingly saving enough money, she underwent a fifth procedure, hoping it would finally bring her relief. Unfortunately, her hopes were shattered when a negligent nurse compromised the results of the surgery.
According to her, after the fifth surgery was done, she went to the facility for her wounds to be dressed. Unfortunately for her, the nurse who attended to her did not know that the suturing was done with dissolvable stitches, hence opening the wounds by untying the suture.
“She tore everything when she removed the stitches,” Bassy noted, adding, “The nurse didn’t know. Even with the pain I was going through and shouting, she managed to remove everything.”
She recounted that following her harrowing experience with the nurse, she underwent three additional surgeries in an attempt to repair her fistula, but each one ended in failure.
Her condition worsened significantly, leaving her in a more dire state than when she first sought treatment, as infections began to ravage her health. “I was in constant pain,” she lamented.
