Life Stlye

tan, the Ward Health Committee Chairman, Ibeshe Riverine, Mr. S. A. Amodu says “Two months ago, I had a medical outreach here. I do it once in a while for them. But that is not enough. Ilahse needs a health centre.”

He decried that during emergencies, it is not easy to bundle pregnant women to the health centre. “We have been trying to help one another with our personal boats.

“Most times, sailors refuse to lend them their boats. It is what they use for livelihood. If the government can buy us one boat and an engine – without providing a boatman – we shall do it ourselves for the sakes of these women.”

Emphasising that these women are people’s daughters, sisters, nieces, aunts and wives, who have become vulnerable, Amodu said anything could happen to them at any time. Hence, the dire need for government’s intervention.

Now, among these challenges of trekking or boarding a flying boat to access healthcare, what happens to the woman when there is delay in getting a boat or when the health workers are yet to attend to her?

Programme Officer of Devcoms Non Governmental Organisation responsible for the tour, Ayodele Adesanmi, explained, “There are three kinds of delay.”

“There is delay before the woman gets permission from her husband to go to a hospital. Now, the second type of delay is what Ibeshe women are facing. This is the delay to go for delivery from home to the facility.

“Now, we sailed for 45 minutes before we got here. So, what this means for a pregnant woman in labour is that she has to sail on water for same minutes. What if she gets to the bank of the river and there is no boat?” Adesanmi pointed out.

According to him, “when the expecting mother finally gets to the health centre in Ibeshe, there you find out that the midwife does not live anywhere close by the clinic. The midwife comes only on Mondays and Tuesdays from town, she sails on water to get there.”

He described the health centre as outdated. “It is not up-to-standard of what a primary health centre should. There is no laboratory testing only a matter of antenatal and delivery. The facility has got no doctor, too.”

With the third delay, the Programme Officer added that the woman gets to the facility and realises she needs to get to a secondary facility due to some complications. Now she is referred to another clinic, it becomes a matter of sailing to town again.

Adesanmi urged, “I think the basic thing is to reduce the delay that may occur during the distance from home to facility and the third delay at the facility level.”

Indeed, as recommended by doctors, expecting mothers should register in the nearest hospital, the only nearest is Ibeshe.

Now, since Devcoms prides itself as an advocate for maternal and child health in Nigeria and trains health journalists constantly, Adesanmi affirmed that from what they have heard, “We have come to realise that old men and women are the ones helping pregnant women deliver here.”

He went on: “The same thing happened in Ibeshe, where the so-called facility is. Women don’t access it because they don’t offer quality there. The next option becomes Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA).” And TBA, according to statistics, is responsible for 38.1 per cent of maternal deaths in the country

While the student of Accounting – TItilayo Balogun – narrated the ordeal of a mother and child mortality which occurred just two weeks ago in Ilashe during delivery, she feigned indifference to the whereabouts of the widower.

“She was a distant relation. I left for university in Ghana only to come back and realise that she had died alongside the baby during delivery. Since then I have not seen the husband,” she said.

Sadly, this number could be among the 576 deaths of Nigerian women in every 100, 000 live births during delivery. Although the people of Ilashe smothered their pains with beams of smiles, a cursory look at them would reveal the plights behind their cheers.

While health centre is a necessity, the basic needs of life follow suit. Since Ibeshe is bound by water residents resolve to tapping water from the well for their everyday use.

Bright Philip is 15. He attends a public secondary school with the oyinbos, according to him. He says part of it is the large income of water God has endowed them.

“This ground-well contains our drinking, cooking, bathing, washing and cleaning water. It is very clean and fresh, too.” He said, “There are a few people who afford to buy bags of sachet water from across the river. Many of us drink this water.”

Interestingly, his friend and playmate, Emmanuel Amekudzi, 14, gladly told THISDAY that his family has a well built inside their room. “We don’t drink this water from this well because we have our well inside our home. It’s exactly the same.”

Although Ilasheans vowed to remain there for better or worse, Ilashe has got no market for buying and selling of goods and services.

“We give money to one person to go to the market and buy things. Everybody makes contribution and we send somebody to Ibeshe, which is quite a distance from us.” Demuda lamented.

A life in the dark during the day and generator light at night coupled with fumes. Although they seemed jolly about the unpolluted sea side air they inhale in the day time, residents plead for connection to electricity.

They are all fishermen and fisherwomen. Only a tiny number of them are working outside. They hunt for fish, grill them then take them to Ojo market across water to sell daily.

Therefore, Ilasheans unanimously pleaded for a health centre where qualitative services are rendered. Their words: “We want government to upgrade the health centre with more health workers so pregnant women don’t get frustrated when they go there.”