By Ruth Oginyi
National Obstetric Fistula Centre(NOFIC), Abakalik, Ebonyi state, Monday said a total of 3,063 Vesico Vaginal Fistula(VVF) patients have been treated in the hospital free of charge since the inception of the center.
NOFIC, built and handed over to the federal government by Ebonyi state government under the former governor of Ebonyi state wife chief Mrs. Josephine Elechi, pet project MCCI, the hospital has also done 94 cases of cesarean section within one year and performed 299 baby deliveries within one year as part of ancillary services been rendered apart from the fistula services.
Adding that it has screened about 21,209 cervical and breast cancer patients and treated 951 of them while 1,273 prostate cancer patients have been screened and treated 43 of them.
Professor Johnson Obuna, Medical Director of the hospital, made this known at the hospital when members of the state Correspondent Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists(NUJ), paid him a courtesy visit.
Professor Obuna noted that funding remains a challenge to the hospital, and call on good-spirited individuals to donate to the hospital as the government can not do everything alone adding that its services were free.
He said NOFIC to serve the people more, needs oxygen, intensive care unit, rehabilitation center to assist in training the repaired fistula patient.
“Most of these women developed VVF because they didn’t have money to attend hospital and pay in the hospital where they will deliver. So, they keep on having the fistula. There are some of these women that after repair, they get pregnant. They go back and deliver and it will develop another fistula.
“Since we started these maternity services, all those women who have fistula and they got pregnant, they come here and we do cesarean section for them free. Since we started the maternity services, we have done 94 cesarean sections and then 299 deliveries. There was a 16-year-old girl that got pregnant and we did her surgery-free. That girl if she had delivered elsewhere, would have had a fistula.
“Since our hospital is already offering services for the abused, we said let us take all the abused and make sure that this center is a center you can come you handle and types of abuse. So, we now started gender-based violence unit and we built a brand new bungalow for that. Since we started, we have handled 55 cases of gender-based violence cutting across rape, FGM, economic and physical abuse. “Since we started, we screened about 21,209 cervical and breast cancer patients and 1,273 prostate cancer patients. We have also treated about 513 cervical cancer, 438 breast cancer, 43 prostate cancers, we have repaired about 3,063 fistula patients. In terms of prostate surgery, we have handled about 849. We have screened 868 cases in mammogram services and we have rehabilitated 486 fistula patients”, he said
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