Abortions cost between R30,000 and life, says ministry |11 August 2004

With 33 percent of all conceptions ending up in abortions, the rate at which pregnancies are terminated here is alarming considering that the norm in other countries is five percent.

Elsewhere, two and a half percent occur spontaneously and a similar proportion is induced, the ministry said this last week, at the start of a campaign aimed at encouraging girls and young women involved to stop the trend.

In an interview gynaecologist Robert Michel gave to the media, he said that women are believed to be paying up to R7,000 for pills or crude operations to end their pregnancies.
Many such attempts, he said, result in complications and the culprits end up in Victoria Hospital where such cases when simple cost R5,000 in treatment, and 50 percent of the beds reserved for gynaecologist patients.

Some women, however, end up in the intensive care unit where the ministry sometimes pays up to R30,000 and the women occasionally lose their lives.

Many of those who survive, he said, suffer infertility which costs the country's medical services even more trying to find out why the hopeful mothers cannot conceive.

In a statement, the ministry lamented that between 1999 and 2003, 2,394 abortions were recorded in the country, "making an average of 40 per month."

"The abortion business is blooming," the ministry said, and Dr Michel explained that Seychellois, including some medics, purchase abortion-inducing pills overseas at R1.00 each, but sell them here for R1,500 or more.

The ministry's media and public relations manager, Mrs Marie-Andre Asba, said that some tricksters among the abortionists offer other non-effective tablets for a day or two at exorbitant prices, before finally handing the destructive pills to the hopeful abortees .The ministry plans to highlight the problem and hopefully get people at all levels, involved in fighting teenage pregnancy and abortion," she said.