What Pregnancy and Childbirth Do to the Bodies of Young Girls

In nearly all these cases, the girl has developed vesicovaginal fistula, a hole between the wall of the bladder and the vagina. In a quarter of cases, the prolonged labor will also cause fistula of the rectum, so that the girl constantly leaks both urine and feces.

If fistula sufferers learn that treatment is available and make their way to his clinic, Dr. Syed said he can repair the condition. But the process requires a long recovery: fistula of the bladder takes about five weeks to heal, while a rectal fistula needs four or five months.

In 1978, Dr. Dyalchand began his career in public health at a small district hospital in rural Maharashtra, on the western coast of India. In his first week, two young pregnant girls bled to death — one while in labor, the other at the entrance to the hospital, before she ever made it inside. It started him on a long career of working with communities to convince them to delay the age of marriage and first conception in girls.

That intervention has shown considerable success, and, Dr. Dyalchand noted, India has also been steadily expanding abortion access. The procedure is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

In Gambia, Ms. Bass Gomez said that her clinic is able to offer good prenatal care to pregnant girls, but that does little to blunt the larger trauma of the experience. Her clinic is designed to serve adults, she said. “But when you have a child walk in equally pregnant it’s really traumatizing for the child,” she said. “It’s not comfortable, that environment, it’s not set for them. You can tell they are struggling. There’s a lot of shame and disgrace.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/health/young-girls-pregnancy-childbirth.html