Today is World Health Day and the theme for this year is “Together for a fairer, healthier world”.  The topic on my blog will be The Woman and the Infertility. In the typical African society where a high premium is placed on childbearing and a ticking clock is created following a marriage ceremony, couples are placed under extra and undue pressure when they are unable to conceive early in the marriage. Sadly, the woman bears a large brunt of the effects of this difficulty with conception.  In this article, I seek to explore the erroneously created and patriarchy fuelled misbelief that women are solely responsible for difficulties with conceiving, reasons why couples have difficulty conceiving, and lastly the options available to struggling couples. Infertility is defined as the inability of a couple to conceive within 1 year. In truth, almost half of the cases of infertility are due to problems with the man, with the woman (who is very often and perhaps almost always vil...

 Looking up from her sewing machine, Theresa stared at her husband. He was snoring and turning about in his sleep. This meant that he was not enjoying it at all. From where she sat, she could tell that he was tired and frustrated. Life had not been kind to them recently. Stretching the fabric and pushing it further under the needle, her mind wandered to the day he had come home. It was a Tuesday afternoon. She had been sewing too. But she hadn’t been sewing for money. She was just trying to create a new concept she had been thinking about.  She had just stretched the material when she heard his footsteps at the gate. At first, she wondered who it was. She wasn’t expecting anyone that day. Many of her friends who would normally pay her surprise visits from time to time were out of town. And with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, most people were skeptical about visiting people.  She kept trying to figure out who was coming until she heard him greet someone. Shocked, her ...