I extracted this from one of my post last year when I was a bit more active here. I had to do this again because sometimes last year I witnessed the death of a mother and child and up till this second, when I recall that dreadful and frightening incident, I grieve. “Nigerian traditional history attaches female and infant mortality to the Emere/Abiku mythology. The belief explains that the Emere is an evil spirit that possesses females. The ultimate goal of the evil spirit is to die on selected days like wedding days and immediately after child birth just to cause pain and sorrow to their families. In Nigeria most people take their wives to local native child birth homes partly because of poverty. In cases of complications, infections etc taking hemorrhage for example, women bleed to death because local birth homes do not have the right equipment’s to stop bleeding. Now they blame the cause of death on the woman, maternal death toll rises over a controllable and reversible problem with the existence of proper gadgets. The Abiku on the other hand is the child death by choice it explains the reason why women suffer numerous still births and finally the death of the mother. A problem that can be traced to a negative Rhesus factor a leading but not unavoidable cause of still birth as well as sickle sell anemia. Instead of acknowledging our carelessness the first step towards combating this issue, the famous myth has left Nigeria suffering maternal mortality for centuries now.” This mother that I knew was blamed for her death. RIP to every mother and child that has suffered and died and afterwards blamed for their death because of this horrendous belief.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 23:25:07 +0000