Women's health with Dr Rasheedah

So this post was inspired the readers/followers on social media. This past week, there has been an Instagram post making the rounds online about the unfortunate case of a young woman who has suffered quite severe side effects from an Intrauterine device. I don’t have all the details of the case but I noticed that the post generated a lot of comments from women who were either glad they were not on any sort of hormonal or device contraception or women who vowed to stick to the withdrawal method for contraception. I conducted a survey of 100 Nigerian women mostly in Nigeria and I found that about 21% of women were using a contraceptive device (3% - Implant and 18% for the coil or IUD). A lot of their decision was based either on the fear of hormones or the fear of a foreign device being. Whilst I’m all for autonomy and women having the right to decide what works for them, I am also passionate about women making well informed  medical decisions based on facts/evidence but not fear...

  So this post was inspired by a recent visit to Nigeria. The statistics for unwanted pregnancies and/or abandoned babies is alarming and the truth is they are preventable. A brief data gathering exercise from the women that surrounded me at a point in time revealed that the average woman was not armed with enough information to choose the right contraception and consistently access and use this method. It was sad that a few teenagers I spoke to viewed contraception as either condoms or ‘Postinor’. The average age of first sexual intercourse is around 15, according to the World Bank, in many communities talking about sex before marriage is taboo or ungodly and contraception is believed to encourage promiscuity amongst the youth. It is important however for women in the world today including Nigeria to arm themselves with information and take control of their sexual health. Another barrier to women accessing contraception is the notion that it is expensive; However Postinor-...