Health Ministry seeks UNFPA support to construct new fistula centre at KATH
The Ministry of Health (MoH) has called for support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to construct a stand-alone fistula centre at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Grace Ayensu-Danquah, said it was important for the new centre to be constructed at KATH to enable the facility to provide specialised obstetric fistula treatment and other related care to women.
“We have opened one at the Yendi Municipal Hospital through the efforts of UNFPA, which has both preoperative and postoperative spaces, with places that women can stay before the surgery,” she stressed.
Visit
Dr Ayensu-Danquah, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Essikado Ketan Constituency in the Western Region, made the remarks during a visit to KATH last Thursday, as part of activities marking International Day to End Obstetric Fistula.
The minister was accompanied by officials of the ministry, UNFPA, Parliamentary Select Committee on Health and Parliamentary caucus on Population and Development. She interacted with women awaiting surgery and observed the surgical procedure as well.
Obstetric fistula is an abnormal opening between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum, usually caused by prolonged, unrelieved obstructed labour. Although devastating, it is a preventable childbirth injury which affects many women across the country and beyound.
It leaves women with continuous leakage of urine or stool, social isolation and, in most cases, the loss of their baby.
Ghana records roughly 798 to 894 new obstetric fistula cases per year, an incidence of about one case per 1,000 births.
Between 2016 and 2025, a total of 3,688 cases were seen at health facilities, but only 1,096 were repaired.
She said the ministry would send an official communication to the UNFPA to pave the way for the construction of the centre, saying, “It will become a centre of excellence to train doctors and nurses to learn the procedure and how to take care of women with such conditions”.
Release of land
“Once we reach out to UNFPA and KATH makes land available, we will have a centre of excellence for fistula repair. That means we will have one in the north, another one in the central belt and one in the southern belt.
“Our vision is that these three facilities will become centres of excellence to enable doctors to conduct procedures with low recurrence and high cure rates. This will prevent women from suffering from such a stigmatising condition” she said.
Empathise
The UNFPA Country Representative for Ghana, Dr Wilfred Ochan, said the visit was to empathise with the survivors of the conditions and to encourage the caregivers of the important role they were playing to restore dignity to the affected women.
He disclosed that a new study done in conjunction with the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons revealed that on average, about 845 women get fistula every year.
He said looking at the past 10 years, there is a backlog because initially only 60 women were repaired yearly, which had been increased to 200, stressing that “there is an estimated backlog of between 10,000 and 12,000 of unrepaired women”.
Let us join hands and provide the resources, including technical support that the ministry needs, to deal with fistula.
Survivors must be mobilised to reach care so that they can be repaired,” he said.
Other speakers
For his part, the Chairman, Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, Dr Mark Kurt Nawaane, disabused the minds of people that the condition was superstitious, saying it was a disorder that was treatable.
The Chief Executive Officer, KATH, Dr Paa Kwesi Baidoo, in a remark, said the facility was well-positioned to help address the condition to bring huge relief to the affected women.
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