00:00Many young women, severe period pain is a monthly reality that can affect their everyday
00:05life.
00:06In Kenya and across Africa, endometriosis remains poorly understood and barely treated.
00:12For those living with it, the pain can become a condition they are expected to simply endure.
00:17Let's see.
00:20For generations, women have been told that period pain is something they simply have
00:24to endure.
00:25But what if the pain you are being told is normal, is actually a warning sign?
00:29It's so painful, like you can't do anything, like when it starts, I just leave, I can't
00:41do anything.
00:42Have you ever tried to go to the hospital maybe to get a diagnosis of what is going on?
00:49No.
00:50Why?
00:53Because I think, because I think it's just normal, because after a period I just, it's
01:01just okay.
01:02They don't take it seriously, they just say it's a normal thing.
01:06Others say I keep trained.
01:09And that is where the conversation around endometriosis becomes more complicated.
01:14Because the issue isn't only the pain, it is what happens when that pain becomes so
01:19familiar that women and the people around them stop questioning it.
01:22The tissues, similar to endometriosis, those in the endometriosis grow outside of the uterus.
01:29They can be found in the fallopian tube, outside of the ovary, in any other part.
01:34And usually that growth causes a lot of pain to the patient or client or whoever has experienced
01:41that abnormal growth of the tissues outside of the uterus.
01:44So, when a lady, a woman, experiences this condition, what usually happens is we usually
01:55try to manage them.
01:57The initial stages we usually try to manage by hormonal therapy.
02:00We can support the COCs, the family planning, the hormonal meds or pills, those ones, to try
02:14to see if it will try to correct or stop or slow down the progress of the growth of the
02:21endometrial
02:23growth.
02:24In very severe cases, the patient usually refers to gynecologists who will attend to
02:31the patient.
02:32In extreme severe cases, the patient usually does need to go for such a...
02:38The irony is that the very thing that makes these symptoms difficult to identify may also
02:43be what prevents women from getting answers.
02:45I think most people assume it's a curse by either relatives or your family members, which
02:53is not true, because you can find maybe your parent, your mother, or your aunties did not
02:59experience the same intensity of pain as maybe the one the child is experiencing.
03:05They don't...
03:05Endometriosis affects around one in ten women of reproductive age worldwide.
03:10Yet diagnosis can take years.
03:12It was a young lady, let's just call her ex.
03:15And she had had the condition since she was around, I think, 12 years.
03:20And it got so bad, the time she was 19, it was so bad she had to undergo surgery.
03:26And at that facility where we were, when the surgery was done, the patient was discharged.
03:32After some time, she came back again because it did recover.
03:35Perhaps the conversation shouldn't start with asking women how much pain they can endure.
03:41Maybe it should start with why they are in that much pain.
03:45From Kenya, Camila Ekomor and Oskare for Telesur.
