Tinopona Katsande, Zimbabwe television and radio personality speaks about a painful condition that affects a lot of Zimbabwean women.
Katsande says when she was 16, she started to have severe pain that would come at any time of the month. She was taken to many traditional healers who prescribed herbs but nothing helped.
Finally, her father took her to the USA where she was diagonised with endometriosis. Unfortunately, there is no cure for the condirion, however, there are variety of pain management methods for it.
Tino says many women in Zimbabwe are suffering from this painful condition and there are many myths around it. One of the myths is that when one gives birth early then they will get rid of the condition. However, Tino says she is now 40 and still suffers from the condition.
Writing on Facebook, Tino said
I have a condition called #endometriosis . I started feeling pain at the onset of my period when I was 13 . I went through many wrong diagnosis largely due to the fact that very little awareness on the condition was known about it in Zim at that time ( and still remains to date) I finally got the correct diagnosis when I was 17 and my father took me to America desperate gzfor treatment . The world over endometriosis is a very misunderstood disease and to date THERE IS NO MEDICAL CURE FOR ENDOMETRIOSIS. In Zimbababwe it is often misinterpreted as “jeko (Shona) /Islumo (Ndebele ) and many women are suffering in silence , shrouded in frustration, pain , rejection and even depression over it. The first step to deal with endometriosis is get the correct diagnosis then you can begin to map a way forward .
Tino ends by encouraging men to take a lead by taking their daughters to get diagonised.
