Help the Mityana mother it may be Urethral Prolapse

By Joshua Kato

As I watched the NTV news item about a mother who claims that her 4 year old daughter was raped at school, i remembered our very own similar case recently.

My daughter came back from school with a lot of blood flowing from her private parts. All her clothes were bloody. We rushed her back to her school, suspecting a case of defilement. The school nurse indeed confirmed that the kid was raped! We rushed to the next clinic were it was also confirmed defilement!

And if i was the type to loose ‘wires’ so fast, i would have ‘arrested’ the nearest person around but i did not. Something within me still had doubts.

The girl was playing around so lively that beyond the flowing blood, there were no other signs of defilement. But rather than make a conclusion, we sought the services of another doctor, Dr Mwanje from Mulago hospital.

We drove very fast through the evening traffic, to Case clinic were Dr Mwanje had gone for his private shift. “No, the girl was not defiled,” he told us. This is called Urethra Prolapse, he told us. In fact he added,

“There are many innocent men who were left in the care of young girls, who are in prison for defilement because of such misinterpreted cases,” the doctor explains.

So as I watched this mother from Mityana explaining..i noted that the case looks similar to ours.

Dr Mwanje, from Mulago hospital explained that Urethral Prolapse- is characterized by a circular eversion of the mucosa at the distal end of the urethra that may present as vaginal bleeding, dysuria, and/or difficulty with urination.

He explained that it occurs in young girls especially when they fight the argue to go to the toilet and indeed my daughter hated going to the school toilets and instead keeps the urine until she came back home.

So because of the pressure, blood collects and creates a swelling around the urethra, before it bursts, letting off a lot of blood. To the lay eye, it looks like the child has been defiled! People further mistake the wound created after the swelling bursts as a result of the defilement.