Should You Deliver In Church?

I shall tell a story, no two. Real life experiences.

Immediately I saw her I knew something was wrong. She looked old and tired for her age of 28. It hit me as she sat down to talk. The smell was that of urine, stale urine.As she untied the
rags that served as her pads, I very nearly convulsed.As a doctor you never get used to the worst of smells. This was the worst.

Her story was thus: She was to give birth in a hospital in 2003. The baby was too big. Her pastor said no way to the operation that was
prescribed. So off she went to the church (which I decline to name). She delivered without the operation quite alright, 3 days later of a dead baby.
That was when her real trouble started. She no longer needed to urinate as she just leaked urine from her privates. Imagine it. Urine seeping out of your body all day long. Everyone except her closest family abandoned her. She worked as a farmer to raise money to come to the big city for treatment.
Ten years later she is here.Unfortunately there are only a handful of doctors who specialize in treating VVF (vesicovaginal fistula). So she has to go to a bigger city to see even bigger doctors.for an operation which has a high chance of not succeeding.

Story 2. She was 6 feet plus and weighed at least 120kg. But that was not the only striking thing about her and her pregnancy. It was her blood pressure which was hitting the roof. We admitted her and planned her for ceaserian
section. In the middle of the night she ran away ostensibly to deliver in the church. I didn’t fault her too much, much of the pressure came from her husband, a pastor.
Anyway we soon forgot about her and moved on to other patients. That was until 4 days later when she returned having convulsions. My Ogais a no nonsense man. He told them to vamoose(Leave here). Actually we were in theater foranother operation. They refused to leave oh, and then she had another furious convulsion. Short of the story is that she lost the baby and her womb that night.

Nigerians are first and foremost religious. This is not surprising after all God is a Nigerian. This is
accounted for by the hundreds of thousands of religious houses in the country. This on its own
is not necessarily bad. In a country as challenging as ours we need all the help we can get, divine help inclusive. When it comes to health problems many Nigerians turn first to their pastors.
Let me go straight to the one that concerns me. By how much should a Pastor/Imam interfere in your health care. And in the case of out topic should you even consider delivering in a church, after all where better to find supernatural support during delivery than in the house of God?

Medicine has evolved over the years. Nevertheless the idea behind safe delivery has not. There are two necessary aspects to safe delivery. The first is presence of skilled persons to conduct the delivery. Does your church/ mosque have trained staff to take deliveries? You should know that it takes skill to know when to tell a woman to “push”. It takes even more skill to know if the woman should even push in
the first instance. It is also important to know when the woman has pushed enough.
If push comes to shove, can the required operation be performed? Remember that the desired end product is a healthy baby to a
healthy mother. Perhaps the most important skill is knowing which ones you can deliver and the ones you should send to experts. The other aspect is the environment. Is it safe to give birth there without unnecessary risk of infections to the mother and the baby?

The end results of attempting to deliver in the church, mosque or anywhere else for that matter where the answers to any of the two question required for safe delivery is no is beyond imagining.

Our two stories well and illustrate this.

By

Dr Ifeanyi Nwanji
University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH),
Benin city, Nigeria.
Dr Ifeanyi is a medical doctor in Benin. He blogs @ Naijaclinic.com

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About Unknown

Eddy Uwoghiren is a Medical Student at the University of Benin, Benin city, Nigeria. He is a contributor to several prints and web media. He freelances with nine newspapers in Nigeria. Eddy is very passionate about medical journalism. He wants to find out why some communities are more healthy than others, develop skills needed to cover health and medicine anywhere in the world, for any audience , in any medium.