Uganda’s ‘champion men’ make case for vasectomy
KAMPALA, Uganda — When Martin Owor, a father of six, told his wife he was considering a vasectomy, she told him it was out of the question. How would they live as husband and wife after his surgical sterilization?
But after a long conversation about growing up poor, the Ugandan man went ahead with a procedure that remains widely unpopular in sub-Saharan Africa, where misunderstandings are high.
To spur development, this East African country hopes to lower population growth. The issue is widespread in Africa, which faces a population boom.
Sub-Saharan Africa, with some of the world’s most impoverished nations, will continue to be plagued by poverty unless governments reduce high fertility rates, development experts say. Uganda has started recruiting “champion men” to speak publicly on television and elsewhere about vasectomies as a method of family planning. It has proven difficult. Many men fear it leads to impotence. Some worry about being stigmatized. Others ask what might happen if, after a vasectomy, they lose all their children in some catastrophe.
“Many people think that when a man goes for a vasectomy, he is not going to continue being a normal man,” said Owor. “But there is no problem. My wife is very happy.”
Owor said he was compelled to have a vasectomy because he didn’t want his children to grow up hopelessly poor.
“My father had 12 children, so we never had a chance of having a quality education,” Owor said. “I needed a number that I would try to manage.”
Uganda’s population has ballooned to more than 41 million in 2016 from 17 million in 1990.
Only 35 per cent of married women in Uganda use modern methods of contraception. Abortion is illegal, except to save the mother’s life.
Although Uganda’s fertility rate dropped to 5.4 today from 6.9 births per woman in 2001, officials say a desirable rate is four births per woman. As “champion men” speak out, the government is working to increase male involvement in family planning to meet that goal.
“We can’t coerce them, because family planning is voluntary and is supposed to be based on human rights, and we want to keep on engaging them,” said Placid Mihayo, a government official in charge of sexual and reproductive health.
Uganda remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per-capita income of US$615. The situation is dire in rural areas, where health facilities often lack basic medicines and many children drop out of school.
Some warn that the country won’t come close to meeting its ambitious development targets — achieving lower-middle-income status by 2040 — without wider use of birth control.
Vasectomies are still a small part of Uganda’s effort. Each month, two or three of the procedures are performed at a clinic run by Reproductive Health Uganda in Kampala, said Dr. Kenneth Buyinza. The vasectomy costs about $13, which Buyinza said is affordable to most Ugandans. The price is $50 or more at some private facilities.