No Abortion Is Complete Until Evacuation Is Done, Says NIMR Boss

Prof. Innocent Ujah, Director-General, National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), says there is no complete abortion without the evacuation of the womb.
Ujah said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja.

He said unsafe abortion could either be induced or be spontaneous, adding that whichever form of abortion, the woman needed to visit the hospital for proper evacuation of the foetus.

“The issue of unsafe abortion can be as a result of spontaneous abortion or induced abortion. The worrisome case is a situation where women will miscarry and they don’t go to the hospital; that is not induced abortion.
“If there is any tissue in the womb, it will become infected and once infected, it will spread to the wombs and the tubes thereby blocking them.

“So you find out that some women might start having babies and suddenly stop because of untreated miscarriage, they get infected and their wombs get blocked which prevents them from having babies.
“If any woman miscarries, she needs to go the hospital to wash the womb, no abortion is complete until an evacuation is done and that will reduce the significant level and incidence of complicated unsafe abortion,” Ujah explained.

He recommended improved prevalence of contraception among women of reproductive age, adding that it will reduce the incidence of unsafe abortions.
He recalled that the country’s law on abortion was only done to preserve the life of the woman thereby exposing so many young women to unsafe abortion.
“The first thing to do is to improve our contraceptive rate, because contraception access is very low and not many people are aware of the value of family planning.
“Family planning is done to protect women who are not ready to have babies, whether girls or women. It is only when they are ready they can have babies.
“Once we improve the contraceptive prevalence rate we will find out we will do well,” he said.

“The other one that creates a lot of problem is unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, because you can have unplanned but wanted pregnancy.

“The unplanned pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy is the issue we need to sort out and by law it cannot be terminated unless it is to save the life of the woman.
“But before the law is reviewed we will continue to educate women of reproductive age to accept family planning because that will help a lot in reducing unplanned and unwanted pregnancy,” said Ujah.

-NAN