Help sought to remove implants

IMPLANTS are a modern and effective method of family planning lasting up to five years and used worldwide for more than 20 years, says Health secretary Pascoe Kase.
Kase made this statement after a group of women called on the Health Department to provide avenues for them to have their family planning implants removed due to side effects.
However, Kase said that women who wished to have their implants removed needed first to undergo proper counselling by a trained health professional.
More than 20 women called on the Health Department to provide a safe avenue for them to remove their implants without being turned away or verbally abused by health workers.
Spokeswoman Mary Hulova told The National that they had been trying to remove their family planning implants since the end of last year but were turned away by both the public clinics and other partner service providers.
“It’s been five years now, the implants have grown into our flesh and we have been suffering from all sorts of side effects like migraines, severe backaches, itchy skin and weight problems,” Hulova said.
“We want to remove these implants because for over five years now, we have not had our natural menstrual flows and we need to remove this implants in our arms, so that the bad blood can come out of our system.”
Hulova and the other women had the implants placed in their arms in 2014 and given cards.
“It’s been years and many have misplaced those cards.
“When we went to the service providers who are the health department’s partners to remove them they turned us away as we did not have the cards.
“We went to Susu Mamas Clinic at 3-Mile but again we were turned away and told to go back to the service providers because the implants were placed by them, so many have given up and have just continued on living with the implants.
“We are now calling on the government to help us and provide avenue for us to go to and remove these implants,” she said.
Hulova said they had been abused by health workers at other government clinics they visited.
“Getting pregnant and giving birth is not a bad thing, which is the whole idea of getting family planning in the first place, so that we can have kids when we are ready to,” Hulova said.
Kase said health workers, both in government and non-government institutions, needed to be professionalism when dealing with women wanting to remove their implants.
“Our health workers need to respect the rights of these women and not turn them away,” Kase said.
“If health workers feel that they are not able to counsel or that they aren’t trained to remove the implant than they must refer the women to other facilities.”
Kase said the Health Department approved the use of implants in their family planning programmes since 2014 and had partnered with other service providers.