Symptoms and Effects
Symptoms of obstetric fistula include:
- Flatulence, urinary or fecal incontinence, which may be continual or only happen at night
- Foul-smelling vaginal discharge
- Repeated vaginal or urinary tract infections
- Irritation or pain in the vagina or surrounding areas
- Pain during sexual activity
Other effects of obstetric fistula include stillborn babies due to prolonged labor, which happens 85% to 100% of the time, severe ulcerations of the vaginal tract, "foot drop," which is the paralysis of the lower limbs caused by nerve damage, making it impossible for women to walk, infection of the fistula forming an abscess, and up to two-thirds of the women become amenorrhoeic.
Read more about this topic: Obstetric Fistula
Famous quotes containing the words symptoms and, symptoms and/or effects:
“Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)