By: Nyima Sillah
Fallu Sowe, National Coordinator of Network Against Gender-Based Violence (NGBV), has called on government through the Ministry of Health to help fund campaigners to tackle infertility debacle in marriages.
Speaking to The Voice exclusively, he said: “infertility has a lot of connection with Gender Based Violence especially in cultures like that of the Gambia where women are expected after marriage to have children as one of the fundamental roles. While Activist in The Gambia should start to incorporate the issue of infertility in their sensitization program so that once they talk about the different cases of gender-based violence, they include infertility as one of the things that can causes Gender Based Violence.”
“Activist should inform the community about what they can do once they realize that they are married for one or two years without a child. Advise them to go visit the hospital for checkup so they can know where the problem lays and find solution to the issue instead of abusing, torturing and going through emotional trauma,” he added.
According to him, institutions like the Ministry of Health has a great role to play because infertility most of the time is a health-related problem that sometimes can happen as a result of early marriage, FGM, Rape or STI, so all those issues are health related issues.
“Therefore, health programing should look at infertility and midstream it to their programs. Also, nurses in the clinic and community level should also sensitize their people so that the impact of infertility issues are address,” and once that is done, both genders would understand the causes of infertility and know that there could be a solution to it. That would be easy for women and both genders will understand how both of them are responsible for child bearing,” he said.
“Donor agencies, organizations, the UN agencies or people with the money who funds SGBV programs, projects should also look into that how they could incorporate the issue of infertility into their fundings base because sometimes what activists do and what some government institutions do is really dictated by the funders,” he added.