[PHOTO/soc.ucsb.edu]
A drug first intended to save lives of mothers by preventing excessive bleeding during birth is now being used for abortions.
Misoprostol or Cytotec, which taken together with aspirin, was originally made to prevent the creation of ulcers in the stomach.
As such, it is intended to offer protection to thousands of women who could lose their lives in the event of excessive bleeding during labour.
However, the drug which retails at Sh150 is now being abused to carry out home abortions.
While it is not sold over the counter in big pharmacies in Nairobi, a survey by The Standard revealed that the case is not the same in smaller chemists elsewhere.
“We only sell this drug when you have a prescription from a gynaecologist,” said a pharmacist at Savannah.
On social media, a user confessed how she learnt everything she needed to procure an abortion after finding a shop on River Road which sold the drug to her.
“I found out that if I took the drug for a pregnancy that is under 12 weeks or 84 days, there was 90 per cent success rate and since I was not ready for a child, I rushed to get one,” she said as quoted by the Standard.
“I learnt that it would cause contractions in the womb and expel the pregnancy and the side effects would be cramps, bleeding and nausea.
However, no one can describe the pain I went through when I took the drug,” she says.
She says she fainted after calling close friends who rushed her to hospital.
“I knew they (doctors) had no way of establishing that this was intentional but I came clean with them because I feared I was going to die,” she says.