Communication barrier frustrates deaf women accessing health services – Hellen Beyioku-Alase

Hellen Beyioku-Alase is the Executive Director, Deaf Women Aloud Initiative (DWAI), and the Chairperson, Deaf Women Association of Nigeria (DWAN), Abuja Chapter. In this interview with ENE OSANG she speaks on communication barriers between health workers and deaf women, and project Health Empowerment Rights (Project HER) among other issues.

You are the Chairperson, Deaf Women Association of Nigeria (DWAN), Abuja Chapter, and some of your members have lamented unfavourable healthcare services in the FCT, what is really the situation?

Honestly, we don’t see midwives as being wicked but we are frustrated and all we need is to break that communication barrier. We want to access health care, but the truth is that the communication barrier always frustrates us.

When at the hospital we can’t hear anything, no sign language interpreters, so when they are talking we will just be looking at them. We don’t understand them and they don’t understand us and that is why most of the time, you hear our members say the nurses are wicked.

For instance, during pregnancy if I go to the hospital in the morning, I will be sitting there and they will not attend to me and I will be there for a long time, watching other women leave and this is due to the communication barrier. We are frustrated because of that barrier and we say the nurses are evil and wicked. As a result, you find some deaf women don’t bother going to any health centre. They give birth at home and you can imagine how risky that is.

Have you had personal experience of communication barrier when you go to the hospital?

Let me share my story of how I gave birth to my second child in the hospital. I was lying down on the bed, the doctor was saying: “madam Push,” I was just looking at the doctor and was just shouting because I was in serious pains. The nurses were hitting me, I did not know what they were staying until I saw they doctor touch his head, that was when I understood that the baby’s head was close and before you know it my baby came out.

The doctor had to stitch me when I did not have episiotomy; I was trying to ask them why they were doing that and they didn’t understand but finally they said my baby’s head was big so she gave me a tear. All these happened because of communication barrier.

So, during my next pregnancy, I did not go to the hospital. I went to the church and that was where I put to bed because I did not want to go to the hospital. Most of my women go through the same thing. It’s not because of poverty that I didn’t want to go to hospital. No, I had the money to pay but it was because I am always frustrated at the hospital that I stayed away.

Are you saying that FCT hospitals don’t have sign language interpreters?

The hospital had sign language interpreters under a programme in 2017 but since that program stopped, there are no sign language interpreters. Our women have been going to hospitals and they are still suffering because of lack of information and communication.

We have deaf women who are HIV positive and are pregnant, imagine what has been happening to these people. Even if I come with my interpreter, imagine that the doctor tells me that I have HIV, the third party has already heard and my secret is not safe. There are things I wouldn’t want the interpreter to hear.

So, what is the solution?

We started project Health Empowerment Rights (Project HER) with support from the American Embassy and in the first phase, which we concluded recently, we trained some health workers from different hospitals in Abuja on sign-language. We hope that with this project nurses and doctors will learn basic sign language to say something like ‘push’. It’s not difficult and the deaf will understand.

The goal of Project HER is to improve deaf women’s access to healthcare, especially in maternal reproductive health and child health.  This is where most of the deaf women have problems and it’s always an ugly story for us.  From ante-natal care to childbirth, labour and post-natal care, even things as simple as checking blood pressure (BP).

The Interpreter, Patience, is pregnant like me. Most of the things she tells me, I don’t know and I am a mother of four. When I asked her how she knew, she told me it was from the ante-natal clinics. But I attended too, and nobody told me anything.

I get most of the information I have from the internet. Some deaf women will say don’t eat vegetables or protein, but how did they get that information? We avoid things we should take during pregnancy. So, even taking routine drugs, some deaf women will tell you if you do that, you will give birth to a blind child because they don’t have enough ante-natal information.

So, we really need to break this communication barrier because healthcare is about our lives, the future of our children, and the future of our country. Some women lose their lives during childbirth so you can imagine how it is for deaf women who don’t get any information. We go through ignorance every day.

I remember last year in Lagos, when a deaf woman went to give birth in Lagos and she died, a lot of deaf women said it was the doctor that killed her. We did not know the complication that led to her death.

As we are building the capacity of women in Project HER, we are looking at women especially expectant mothers, the challenges they face due to lack of sign language interpreters. If we have everything and we don’t have health, then we have nothing. Like they say, health is wealth.

For me, education and sensitization will go a long way to better our lives, it is only when we know that we can improve ourselves but honestly, sign language is not difficult. Some things I say here, from my body language, you will understand me. That is why we are bringing health workers into Project Her so they can learn the sign language themselves.

We have just begun the second phase of that project with advocacy visits to hospitals where we intimate the hospital on the project.

We are also requesting representatives from the hospitals to be part of the project because we need their input in the sign language glossary for health workers which we are about to produce.

I am confident that this glossary will teach health workers the basics sign language. We will drop copies at different hospitals to ease communication between us and health workers.

So far, the hospitals we have visited have shown commitment to the project and we hope that many health workers will show interest in learning the sign language.

What are your expectations from the project?

Our expectation from Project HER is that after the project health personnel involved should know the basics of the sign language.

The health care providers should plan for the deaf women, and to build the capacity of stakeholders to better understand our needs and include us in policies.

We are also building capacity of deaf women to speak out on the challenges they face so they can get help.

In what areas do you think government can help deaf people?

We want the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act (VAPP Act) in sign language so it could be accessible for us. We want to see that some of the communication barriers are removed, especially when it comes to sexual and reproductive health information for women.

Health workers should include deaf women in their policies as well. When they are making presentations, they should remember that there are deaf women. They should remember there are people like deaf women and make information available to us.

We want decision makers to include women when they are planning.  From the planning stage, if we are not there, then, we are left behind.  We want to live lasting impact for mother and child so that Nigeria can be a safe place for deaf women especially when it comes to reproductive health.

What is your advice to deaf people?

We want deaf women to familiarize themselves with their social responsibility and know how to talk and adjudicate for their rights.

Again, the nurses and doctor should try and learn this sign language so that we can have people we can share confidential things with. It is important that health workers learn sign languages so they can give us confidential information directly.

We need to have proper information when we go to hospital, for instance we want to know why a woman should go for a C-section and not a normal delivery.

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