Pembe Grade 6 Pupil In Hospital After Failed Abortion

A 13-year-old grade 6 pupil of Pemba Primary School has been treated at a mobile hospital after aborting her pregnancy.
And a task force team aimed at tackling the issue of teenage pregnancies has been formed in Pemba district.
In an interview, Dr Robinson Mwewa who was the mobile hospital outreach programme coordinator to Mazabuka”s Nkonkola village and Pemba district, which ended its four-day tour of duty on Friday, said 2,123 patients were attended to in Pemba.
“We had a 13-year-old girl who had aborted at home and hid the situation from her parents. When she went into pain, she was brought here and she opened up to our medical doctors. She has just been discharged today (Friday),” he explained.
Dr Mwewa said teachers from her school visited the mobile hospital and were briefed on what the medical team found.
“They told us that this problem of teenage pregnancies is rampant in Pemba. So as a district, they have formed a task force to tackle the problem with people from the Victim Support Unit, district education board and social welfare. They came here and we had a discussion and we gave them what we discovered,” he said.
Dr Mwewa said men in the province are prone to hernia due to the hard labour they subject themselves to, being farmers.
“The pattern of conditions we have been attending to is similar to Nkonkola (in Mazabuka). We did two births by through caesarean section and a number of hernia cases are common among men. We think this could be due to the hard work they do as farmers,” he said.
Dr Mwewa said a number of minor operations such as circumcision were conducted while eye patients had been referred to Monze Mission Hospital where Dr High Namani Monze, who is an ophthalmologist would be able to attend to them.
“We booked 15 patients because Dr Monze was not here and eight turned up and would be operated on at Monze Mission Hospital by Dr Monze,” said Dr Mwewa.