African Woman and Child Feature Service

Nicoleta Kambura was in and out of hospital several times for four months. One day in 1992 she decided to be tested for HIV and found out she was positive.

She was not informed immediately but continued to receive her medication at the hospital for some days.

One day a nurse came to her bed and told her “uko na ugonjwa mbaya sana (you have a very bad disease)”.

She then took her to the nursery and showed her babies who had been born with complications. The nurse pointed out one child in particular. The baby was underweight and had wounds all over the body. “This is how children who are born by mothers like you look like,” the nurse said.

According to Nicoleta, she was told that if she ever gave birth then the child would be in very poor health and would eventually die.

She was, therefore, convinced that she was not worthy of being a mother. Nicoleta was made to believe that if she brought a child into the world, it would suffer and eventually die a painful death. “What the nurse told me has never left my mind,” says Nicoleta. She remembers the nurse looking at her straight in the eyes and saying: ‘Hakuna kitu kizuri kinaweza toka kwa tumbo yako (Nothing good can come out of your womb).’

“During my stay at the hospital, I thought deeply and decided to follow the advice by the health professionals. I, therefore, signed the consent forms and underwent the surgery,” she says.

After undergoing the irreversible process, Nicoleta realised that she did not have to undergo the surgery. She met so many women who are living positively and having children.

According to Nicoleta, she did not know that there are ways that women can avoid transmission of HIV from the mother to child.

“It is now almost 20 years and I am still alive contrary to what I was told at the hospital,” says Nicoleta adding that she had been told to wait for her death.

Nicoleta is not the only victim of misinformation and ignorance. Miriam Atieno had her second child in 2006. This is the same year when she discovered that she was HIV positive.

Attendants at the health facility told Miriam that the child she was carrying would be born HIV free but she would die if she gave birth again.

At the time, Miriam was only 20 years old. Her husband was also HIV positive. She was informed that she would have to undergo a caesarean section operation to ensure that there was no transmission of virus to the child at birth.

Being young and naive, Miriam followed all the advice she was given.

The nurses always wanted to know where she would deliver and so when the time came she was directed to a health facility where she would undergo the operation.

“I paid KSh300 and my husband signed the consent form,” she says.

Her husband however died four months later. After the burial she met another man who is also living with HIV and they got married. They have been living together for some years now and the man wants his own children.

The problem is Miriam can longer give birth. The hospital never told her the kind of sterilisation they did to her. The man is now threatening to leave saying she is barren.

“What pains me is the fact that I know I was not barren. I wish I was not HIV positive and I would not have to be sterilised,” she says with a tinge of sadness.

In other cases women are forced to accept sterilisation in order to save the child. Margaret Mwachai is one such woman. She found out that she was HIV positive in 2003. She was pregnant with her eighth child. The seventh child was one month old then.

Margaret admits that the narrow spacing between her children is not healthy.  However, she is also aware that she was denied the chance to choose a family planning method she preferred.

“I understand that the spacing was not good for me but the method they used to sterilise me is what I did not like,” she says. She says there are other family planning methods but they insisted on this one.

Margaret was even told that if she did not get sterilised then she would not get her drugs and the child would not be given milk. Since Kenyatta National Hospital is the only place she got her medicine from and she could not breast feed either, she decided to oblige.

“I underwent tubal ligation to save my child but she still died after that,” says Margaret. Margaret’s husband later died and her current boyfriend wants his own child.

She believes that she should have been given a chance to choose the type of family planning method to use and not be forced on a particular one.

Women who have undergone this process also question the way they were handled by the doctors. Not much information is given before and after the process.

This article was originally published in the 16 Days Special of the Reject (Issue 51) - Download Reject Online Issue 51