Why women fear caesarean section - Gynaecologist
Agboghoroma told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday that caesarian section is an abdominal operation carried out on an expectant mother to deliver a baby.
He said women believed it was a thing of pride to say they were delivered of a baby naturally and not through caesarean section ·
"What has even made it worst in our society is some superstitious believe that women who have committed some offences either through fornication, adultery or committed some evil - maybe they are witches.
"They see inability to deliver on your own as a curse, the repercussion for the evil or bad things the woman has committed in the past.
"So they want to prove that yes they did not do anything wrong that they can deliver virginally. So they run away from the option of having a surgery.
"So we have seen many of them; they only come back to the hospital in severe morbidity, when the women are either dead or they have ruptured their wombs."
The doctor, however, said that the major reason women were afraid of undergoing caesarean section was because of the fear of being cut open.
"Everybody is cautious when it comes to operations; nobody wants to be put under anastasia, nobody wants to be put under a knife if it can be avoided.
"That is a basic reason why many people run away from operations," he said.
He said complications arising from past surgeries could make some women scared of undergoing a caesarian section.
The doctor added that out of ignorance, many women always attributed the death of their babies to an emergency surgery they underwent to help save the life of the mother.
"Most of our women who had operations in the past, many of them had the operations as emergency, and when they have the operations as emergency, things have already gone wrong.
"Most of the time they ended up with what we refer to as prolonged obstructed labour and one of the features of prolonged obstructed labour is that the baby is virtually dead if not already dead as at the time the operation is undertaken.
"So when a woman recovers, subsequently she attributes the fact that she had an operation to the death of the baby which should be the reverse. So it is a lot of ignorance."
The doctor said the financial implication of carrying out a caesarean section could deter a lot of women from undergoing the surgery.
The gynecologist noted that surgery had become relatively safer now with the availability of good anesthetics.
Agboghoroma added that with the availability of good antibiotics help prevent severe infections and donors’ safe blood, the expectant mother stood the chance of surviving in case she bled excessively.
"I will say it is safe in the sense that due to my own practice here, for every 100 women that went to theatre for an operation, a 100 of them comes out alive, they recover successfully, they are home with their family.
"It is relatively safe, so no woman should be afraid of it if that is the decision because it is then better than virginal at the time a decision to deliver you through caesarean section is taken.
"It means that the risk of virginal delivery is high, the risk of either the woman dying or the baby dying or any form of complication is high.
Written by NEWSTRAWL ONLINE UPDATE
Sodiq Oyeleke is a Media, Human Resources, Project Management and Public Relations Practitioner
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