For Magadi which is about 80 kilometres away from Nairobi, women walk for hours under the scorching sun to access the closest health centre manned by a nurse or doctor. But even so, they will not discuss ‘sehemu za siri’.
Furthermore, the women lack the basics of how STDs and UTIs are caused and how they can be treated.
According to AMREF Health Africa – Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program Manager, Dr Shiphrah Kuria, many people shy away from talking about diseases that affect the reproductive system because they mostly relate them to sex.
“Not every infection of the private part is an STI. Obviously STIs are transmitted through sexual intercourse and that is why there is a lot of secrecy, stigma associated with anything around the private part because there is that feeling – if it is an STI where did you get it from,” she posed.
“That woman (Alice) what she has may not be even STI but she suffers the same fear, the same stigma, part of the reason is because of the culture where we are coming from, it was a taboo in most of our African society to speak about sexual matters. You see we said regardless of what it is, it is thought to be an STI – so it is better not to talk about it.”
Cultural values become a hindrance to discuss matters of sex also for caregivers.
“You can imagine I am a young man and a lady who is as old as my mother walks in and she has a discharge, I may want to treat her in the line of commonest STIs and forget she could be having cancer, so I have to look because there is nothing wrong with looking- sometimes the growth is just there – cervical cancer is common,” Dr Kuria explained.
Though most reproductive diseases are treatable, Dr Kuria warned that some of them if untreated or treated late can lead to infertility and even death.
In the case of Gladys and Alice, the infection could be simply bacterial but can also be a signal to more serious illnesses like cancer or fibroids.
“Even more frightening – are diseases that are thought to be STIs when they are not.”
One of the commonest is cancer of the cervix; “because it presents itself with discharge – if you tell me an old woman is having an STI instead of thinking like that I would think of checking the cervix. I have known cases of women who have had discharge dismiss it because they think ‘at my age I have not been involved in sex’ but they end up coming when it’s too late when the cancer is advanced.”
There also other common diseases such as fistula which according to Dr Kuria are mistaken for STIs and for that reason, they don’t go for treatment but choose to live with leaking urine and stool which can affect their genitalia.
If STIs and UTIs are untreated, Dr Kuria warned, they can cause infertility due to blocked tubes in women and urethras in men.
Listening to Dr Kuria, one can only hope the likes of Alice, Gladys, Sampao and Torari will have a chance to get treated or be informed of how they contract the diseases and how they can prevent them.
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