With an inherent determination to help those less fortunate, an Eastern Cape doctor has opted to apply his set of skills to empower women in the far-flung regions of the province.
Dr Dylan Gibson, who is in his final year of the family medicine postgraduate programme at Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha, decided to focus his research on giving women in the rural Eastern Cape better education and access to effective family planning.
The decision led to the 34-year-old receiving a Rural Individual Award from the Discovery Foundation to complete his study on contraception.
Gibson, who grew up in East London, said providing primary health care to the needy was among his motivations as it was the home of family medicine, but his parents were his greatest source of inspiration.
His mother is an anaesthetist and his father an orthopaedic surgeon at Frere Hospital in East London.
Together with his wife and four children, Gibson lives at Madwaleni Provincial Hospital — about 80km from Mthatha — where he has worked as a community service doctor since 2013.
For his qualitative study on contraception, Gibson will be looking at women’s perceptions and experiences of an intrauterine device, also known as the loop, inserted immediately after they have given birth.
He said SA had a high number of unplanned pregnancies and in some cases it was simply because of a lack of information.
“These pregnancies can be the result of contraceptive failure or a lack of knowledge of, or access to, different types of contraceptive methods.
“Many women are only really familiar with the injectables, which are administered every three months,” Gibson said.
“In the rural areas, women cannot always make it to follow-up appointments for a variety of reasons.”
He said women were often not told about the full range of contraceptive options during their pregnancies and therefore relied on things they heard from their family, friends and other community members.
“By the time women arrive at the hospital to deliver their babies, there isn’t enough time to introduce them to a new contraceptive option such as the loop, and many women often end up choosing the method with which they are most comfortable.”
Gibson said antenatal classes provided an opportunity to counsel women about the contraceptive options available to them.
“The right visual aids can be very effective in getting the information about the various options out there.”
The research thus had the potential to provide health-care workers in similar contexts with valuable information to support women in accessing effective family planning.
"“This, in turn, could benefit the community as a whole,” he said.
HeraldLIVE
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