… as BOF targets 1,000 for free surgery
- No drug can shrink fibroid – Surgeon
After many years of pain and agony, Annette Umah from Akwa Ibom State, can now heave a sigh of relief, as 48 masses of fibroid were removed from her uterus.
Before the removal of the multiple fibroids, life was unbearable for Annette, as she had to battle with pain on a daily basis, coupled with the lack of money to meet her medical needs. Besides, the negative perception that people in her community attached to her bulging stomach, after discovering she wasn’t pregnant, was better imagined than experienced.
She said, “I used to be healthier than I look now but since I was told that I had fibroid, my body got thinner and the stomach bigger. The most painful thing is that, in our community, there are many myths and misconception attached to my condition, some people said it was witchcraft, since I wasn’t carrying a baby, yet I had a big tummy.”
Determined to confront the health challenge, Annette began to look for solution the local way with the little resources at her disposal. According to her, the money required for her surgery was nowhere to be found.
However, despite the misconception about her health condition by most of her community members, some concerned ones among them offered to help her. They introduced her to different local medicines with the assurance that the medicines would shrink the fibroid.
“After taking them for some years, I realised I was not getting any positive result. Instead, I noticed that my stomach was rather getting bigger by the day. A lot of people gave me different local concoctions, telling me that after taking them, they will flush out all the things that were making my stomach to grow big like a pregnant woman. So, I still tried the concoction for some years, all to no avail, as my stomach continued to protrude as if I was about to deliver a baby,” she said.
But the story of Annete, however, changed in 2018 when someone introduced her to the Benjamin Olowojebutu Foundation.
She explained, “The person told me that real help had finally come my way, assuring me to go to BOF, that it was offering free fibroid surgery to indigent women in Nigeria. So, when I got to the Foundation, after a thorough check, the medical team prepared me for operation without asking for money.
“When I woke up after the surgery, I felt a lot lighter and relieved. Then, they showed me what was taking away my health, 48 masses! They removed 48 masses of fibroid from me, and they did it for me for free. My joy is endless! Thank God I’m free.”
Fibroid, according to experts, is a non-cancerous abnormal growth that develops in or around the womb (uterus). The growth is made up of muscle and fibrous tissue, and varies in size.
Favour Effiong is another woman celebrating her freedom from fibroid.
Recounting her experience, she said, “After I had my first child, and couldn’t get pregnant again for a long time, I decided to seek help.
She said, “You know, as a religious person, the first thing I did was to go to church to seek spiritual help, considering the fact that everything that happens has a spiritual undertone. When I felt that it wasn’t really working out as planned, I had to go to the hospital for checks.
“This was how I found out that I had fibroid and it was the reason why I was having difficulty conceiving. I was told in the hospital to come for operation and remove it, but where is the money? Where am I going to get N500,000 with the little business that I’m doing?”
After a long period of search for help, Favour came across BOF and she said that singular encounter with the Foundation turned her sorrow into joy.
Available reports show that fibroid has become rampant in Nigeria due to modern lifestyle and late marriage. Though Nigeria has no official data on the number of women in the country with fibroid, experts say at least one in five Nigerian women has it.
Since 2018, many indigent women across the country living with fibroid have been smiling following relief provided to them by BOF through its Vision 36 Healthcare Project, aimed at providing free treatment to women with fibroids, Lipomas and breast lump across the six geo-political zones.
Edem, 42, is a major beneficiary. Not only was multiple fibroids removed from her, the vegetable seller also had her vagina reconstructed by the Foundation after it was badly damaged due to female genital mutilation performed when she was a child.
Speaking with The Point, Executive Director and Founder of BOF, Dr. Benjamin Olowojebutu, said over 650 indigent women were offered free surgeries in 2018, adding that the Foundation had concluded plans to reach out to 1,000 women in 2019.
Olowojebutu said, “We are targeting 1,000 indigent patients suffering from fibroids, lipomas, breast lumps and hernia under our project for 2019 called “Journey To 1,000 Free Surgeries”. We have started already and we just concluded the Ikorodu outreach, where eight fibroid surgeries took place.
“We are off to Cross River, Imo, Abia, Edo, Rivers and Ondo States from February 1.
“We would also be having our first out station outreach in Gambia and South Sudan in July, 2019,” he said.
The surgeon and maternal health specialist noted that BOF was a dream birthed and driven by love and compassion to help indigent people, stressing that the goal of the Foundation was to change the healthcare space with love and compassion in the long run.
We are targeting 1,000 indigent patients suffering from fibroids, lipomas, breast lumps and hernia under our project for 2019 called “Journey To 1,000 Free Surgeries”. We have started already and we just concluded the Ikorodu outreach where eight fibroid surgeries took place
Revealing that the cost of fibroid surgery was high for indigent women, Olowojebutu disclosed that the average cost of surgery was N500,000 in the Mainland and about N1million on the Island, both areas in Lagos State.
“So, imagine somebody earning N4,000 a month. How long will such person save to be able to pay for surgery,” he said.
Giving further insight into the case of Edem, Olowojebutu said female genital mutilation brought deep sorrow to her life and took away her joy of womanhood.
He disclosed, “From the clitoris to the labia minora, even a large part of her labia majora, were completely expunged. I must say, it was terribly done and even If she lived till the age of 60, she would have remained a virgin no matter how much she craved a relationship with the opposite sex. No one would have been able to have sex with her.
“We had gone in hoping that we would just take out the fibroid, since that was our expertise but only to realise that she had no vagina. Edem’s vagina had to be reconstructed before the fibroid operation. The entire surgery – both the myomectomy and vagina reconstruction lasted for six hours 30 minutes.”
Calling for support for the Foundation to reach out to more people, Olowojebutu urged women with fibroid to stop drinking herbal medicines and go for surgery.
The surgeon revealed that no drug would shrink or pass out fibroid from a woman.
