Unsafe, illegal pregnancy terminations lead to 15% of SA’s maternal deaths

Bogus doctors performing back-street abortions are committing murder and getting away with it.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in South Africa 15% of maternal deaths are due to abortion complications. Worldwide, 25 million unsafe abortions (45% of all abortions) occurred every year between 2010 and 2014, according to a study by the WHO and the Guttmacher Institute published in The Lancet.

The majority of unsafe abortions, or 97%, occurred in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

DISA health clinic’s sexual health practitioner professor Elna McIntosh, who has been in the health business for over 26 years, said a high percentage of women die from illegal abortions and the state classifies it as maternal mortality.

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“When you die from abortion and miscarriage, it is regarded as such but nobody does anything about the illegal supply of pills when we all know they are there,” she said.

She added that fake doctors and markets selling illegal abortion pills were widespread and, despite abortion being legal, women were dying from illegal abortions and no one was talking about it or cared. McIntosh said young women “Googled” and were directed to hundreds of numbers of fake doctors selling abortion pills for R500 to R5 000.

“If you just ‘Google abortion pills near me’, you will be shocked at the amount of illegal providers on the internet,” she said. “Cyber-crime experts need to get on this and remove these people from the internet.”

In Gauteng, the public termination of pregnancy facilities are in Ekurhuleni, which has four; Johannesburg, with seven; Sedibeng, which has four; Tshwane, which has eight; and the West Rand with four. Only two hospitals conduct late abortions up to the second trimester (20 weeks): Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto and Leratong Hospital in Krugersdorp.

McIntosh said at most government clinics in Gauteng, nurses conducted abortions and they were registered to do abortions at 12 weeks and not on women whose pregnancies were over 12 weeks.

Fake doctors steal abortion pills from hospitals

McIntosh said the pills used by bogus doctors for abortions were usually Cytotex and Misoprostol.

Cytotex prevents ulcers when taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and Misoprostol is used to prevent and treat ulcers, induce labour, cause abortion and treat postpartum bleeding due to poor contraction of the uterus.

“These fake doctors steal them from hospitals or registered doctors supply them,” she said. “These are scheduled drugs. You cannot just sell these on the streets.”

Gauteng Democratic Alliance health spokesperson Jack Bloom said there was a lack of education about early abortions.

“There needs to be a bigger push for facilities that do early abortions,” he said. “Backstreet abortions and late terms ones can be life-threatening and there should be user-friendly facilities people are aware about. People need to know where they can safely get abortions, the earlier the better, and medical staff need to stop making their feelings known.”

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Spokesperson for City of Joburg MMC for health and social development Charles Cilliers said: “It is crucial people are educated more on using public facilities.”

– lungas@citizen.co.za