English▼
They gave us injections. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. The injection they gave me, I lost the pregnancy.”
This is Aisha, one of the thousands of women and girls kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by Boko Haram in Nigeria.
She escaped with her daughter, and was found by Nigerian soldiers, who took them to a nearby camp.
There, she told us, they gave her two injections of an unknown medicine.
An hour later she was writhing in pain and began bleeding heavily from her vagina.
Aisha then understood. The soldiers, she says, tricked her into an abortion.
She was ‘the woman who loses all the babies.’ Then she learned what might have saved them
In developing countries, there are many like her, whose children have died of Rh disease. Yet the illness, which decades ago was defeated in the West, has a simple cure. Now, a Toronto doctor is helping to lead an international effort to save hundreds of thousands of babies.
Abstract
Objective: To determine the association between oil pollution and miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
Methods: A retrospective cohort study was undertaken of pregnant women (aged 18-45 years) who attended selected health facilities in regions with high and low exposure to oil pollution from May 14, 2018, to September 27, 2018. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select a representative of women with high and low exposure to oil pollution. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were employed to adjust for confounding factors of miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death.
Results: In total, 1564 pregnant women were included in the study. Women with high exposure to oil pollution were more likely to experience stillbirth (odds ratio [OR] 1.806; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.177-2.770) and infant death (OR 2.162; 95% CI 1.409-3.317). However, after adjusting for potential confounders, only infant death was associated with high exposure (adjusted OR 1.843; 95% CI 1.146-2.962). No association was found between miscarriage and high exposure to oil pollution.
Conclusion: Women with high exposure to oil pollution are at higher risk of infant death.
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