Lydia Nabustale (right) says she is four months pregnant. Next to her is her sister who also got married young
By Joyce Nyakato
FIVE minutes with Lydia Nabustale paints a rough picture of the risks involved with pregnancy in the rural setting. She looks barely 16, but claims to be 18 years of age.
Nabustale has a one-and-a-half-year-old child, and she is pregnant. She says she is four months pregnant Asking what led her into early pregnancy, she replies: “I used to stay with my sister and her husband hid my books and told me to get married.”
She says like her, there are many other girls who got married and pregnant at an early age. “The conditions are just so unbearable and many parents end up giving up their girls for marriage so that they can get something in return,” she says.
Now Nabustale worries about being a young wife and mother. When asked about her husband take on all this, she cannot quite say, yet she has lived with him for more than three years.
Nabustale is one of the people who were relocated to Bulucheke camp, following the mudslides in March this year. She delivered her first son with the help of a Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) because she did not know of any midwife in the village.
When she was giving birth, she did not have gloves, a razor blade, or clothes and bed sheets for the baby. She wrapped him in a piece of cloth she tore from an old sheet. The TBA improvised a cloth to stop the continuous bleeding.
“I like her because she touches my stomach and I feel good,” Nabustale says. Now that she is in the camp, she is willing to go to a midwife, although she prefers the TBA. She wants only five children, as opposed to her mother who had 15. She does not know how she will do it, but plans to go to the hospital for a solution.
Her sister, Sylivia Nabuloli, five years older, went through the same ordeal of early marriage, and wants to stop at four children. She has talked to her husband who has agreed and she prays he does not change his mind.
“The conditions are not favourable for many children. We have small tents,” she says. According to Lawrence Moya, a nursing assistant at a health centre III that was covered by the mudslide, many of the women preferred delivering with the TBA despite the existence of the health centre. He says they would deliver a baby a month.
Brighter side After the people were taken to Bulucheke camp, there was increased access to professional medical care. Previously, inaccessibility to health centres posed a great challenge to pregnant women. Now, they are closer to Bukigai the the presence of the health centre and Bududa Hospital.
“Since the camp was set up, I have helped deliver 40 babies,” says Lydia Wamoto, the lone midwife at the camp. She formerly worked at Bukigai health centre. The women had always shunned family planning because they heard rumours that it led to women bleeding to death, and babies with big heads.
A number of recent interventions have been done to counter these myths, the latest being training of pregnant mothers, midwives and nurses by dfcu bank, about safe motherhood. They distributed mama kits which contain cotton wool, disinfectant and surgical gloves.
Nabutsale has learnt about safe spacing, but she hopes that the contraceptives will be available at the health centre. Midwife Wamoto says there has been a problem of stock-outs despite their improvising with what they have to achieve safe motherhood. “Despite the good training, there has been challenge of continuous stock outs and it would be good if we continued receiving the gynecological kits to assist women deliver,” she says.
According to Sharon Rwecurenga, a clinical officer at the AIDs Information Centre, Mbale, and a facilitator at the training, people need to be sensitised more about seeking antenatal services and prevention of mother to child transmission programmes since there is high HIV prevalence in the camp.
