International day to end Obstetric Fistula is celebrated every May 23, to raise awareness of the condition and generate much-needed additional support for women affected.
The WHO report shows that there is a strong association between fistula and stillbirth as approximately 90 per cent of women who develop the condition end up delivering a stillborn baby.
Nambayo Koriata is a Fistula ambassador in Narok county. She has been fighting the disease among the Maa women in the county for two years now.
While in secondary school in the early 2000, Ms. Koriata says she suffered from the condition which compromised her performance in school and was later forced to drop out of school.
Like many Maasai girls those years, Ms. Koriata underwent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) when she was only 12 years old.
“After the cut, a girl is considered a woman, hence I had the societal rights of engaging in sex. At the age of 15 years, I gave birth to my firstborn daughter, but unfortunately developed fistula,” she narrates.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) definition, obstetric fistula is an abnormal opening between a woman’s vagina and bladder and/or rectum, through which her urine and/or faeces continually leak.
It is a rare condition in developed countries with a social taboo attached to women who are outcast due to uncontrolled urine and feces and the foul spell associated with such people.
At first, Ms. Koriata admits that she did not understand what the condition was and decided to keep it to herself and focus on her secondary education.
“The condition was so bad that she always had to put on a pad that she kept soaking with urine and fecal matter,” she recalls.
This made her suffer low esteem and could not joyfully interact with her school mates and play like other girls of her age.
Sometimes, she would soak her uniform with the stool and be forced to stick to her desk by herself to avoid embarrassment.
“The condition affected me psychologically, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I became so weak and slim with no one to share what I was going through. I kept telling myself that one day I would recover from the shame,” she says.
At some point, the young girl decided to reduce the amount of food she was eating and take a little water to avoid wetting herself.
But when the condition persisted, the teenage girls opted to quit school and became pregnant with her second child.
“I told myself that when I get married and become pregnant, the condition would end. However, even after getting my second born, the condition persisted,” she recalls.
She later got married and had three other children, when still suffering from the rare condition.
In the year 2015, she decided to seek medication where she was referred to Kenya National Hospital (KNH) to undergo a surgery to fix a situation.
“I am glad that the condition can be fixed. After the surgery, I was completely cured. I told myself that I would help other women who were suffering from the same condition,” she says, adding that years later, she opened an organization dubbed Nampaiyo Koriata Fistula Trust.
So far, she says, the organization has helped over 300 women, whom she has linked to the relevant hospitals for treatment.
She advises women suffering from the condition not to suffer alone, but visit her office or hospital so that they can be helped.
Ms. Koriata also condemns retrogressive cultural practices like FGM, early marriages and teenage pregnancies as they can easily cause fistula.
“I advise my Maasai community to shun all retrogressive cultural practices as they cause dangerous effects to girls. Let the girl go to school and compete with other children from other communities in the country,” she advises.
Her efforts, she says, were recognized by former first lady Mama Margaret Kenyatta, whom she dined with during one of her visits in Narok County.
By Ann Salaton
