She may experience fertility problems

Aug 2, 2007 18:06 GMT  ·  By

A trauma caused by a rape is severe, but in this case the trauma is double: a raped woman in Meru (Kenya) had a 300-ml soda bottle stuffed in her vagina. Doctors at Meru General Hospital were shocked by the incident after the 20-year-old victim turned back for treatment, two weeks after the ordeal.

The bottle had been pushed in her genitalia by the men that raped her. The event took place on the night of June 26 at Sumbuiga trading center, a few km from Meru Town. The woman, mother of two, had been invited for drinks before she was forced into an incomplete building and raped. She was found unconscious the following morning.

The team doctors managed to successfully remove the bottle. "We had to operate on her as if she was having a baby," said Dr Justus Waweru Ngatia, a consultant gynecologist at the hospital who carried out the operation.

"When the victim went to the hospital complaining of acute abdominal pains, she was immediately admitted. She came walking normally accompanied by her sister but on examining her, we formed the opinion that she required an emergency operation," said Ngatia. "A lot of puss was found around the fallopian tubes and the uterus which could have been caused by the contaminated bottle, besides the sexual assault. The infection of the reproductive organs of the victim could complicate her future attempts to conceive." he added.

Still, the victim responded well to treatment, and after the pus was drained from her abdomen, she had also received anti-retrovirals, having to stay hospitalized for another 10 days. "The victim walked with the bottle in her body for two days before she was admitted for the operation."

The woman did not know she was bearing a foreign object in her abdomen until the pains turned unbearable. She could have been drugged before the assault. Doctors said "she was traumatized and that even after the operation, she could not willingly open up and say what happened on the day she was with the suspects at Sumbuiga."