Training Angolan Government Health Staff about the Causes, Prevention and Treatment of Obstetric Fistula

In September our team of trainers, led by Petra Jobse and Silva Sambaca, undertook the training of 127 government nurses in the province of Icolo e Bengo. We conducted one-day trainings in four different municipalities, namely Cabiri, Calumbo, Catete and Sequele. A total of 83 of the professionals who were trained received A3 sized kits filled with laminated colour images. These kits are designed to support them to conduct sensibilization lectures at their health posts and in their communities.

Health post staff - typically nurses - are often the first port-of-call for women suffering from obstetric fistula but are unable to identify the urinary leakage as a potential birth injury. By training these nurses we can help them to better identify women with obstetric fistula, and provide them with the information necessary to help refer the women on to treatment. We also hope that by training these nurses we can help to spread knowledge and awareness of how to prevent obstetric fistula. In our training, nurses learn about the characteristics of high-risk pregnancies, they learn how and why to encourage women to travel for ultrasounds (usually only available at a limited number of locations), and they receive refresher training on the signs of an obstructed labour in order to more quickly refer women to emergency medical care.

We hope that by conducting this training, and others like it, we are contributing to the improvement of health education for government nurses, enabling women who live with obstetric fistula to be identified and informed about pathways to treatment, and reducing the chances of a woman developing obstetric fistula in the first place.

In the long run, prevention is the only solution to obstetric fistula.

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