‘I have two wombs, two cervixes and two vaginas’

“My name is Elizabeth Amoaa – the woman with two wombs, two cervixes and two vagina canals,” a 38-year-old Ghanaian narrates.

Her tone is almost defiant as she explains how she has struggled with an unusual medical condition.

It was not until she was 32 that doctors figured out what was wrong with her.

Now based in the UK, Ms Amoaa says she spent years with crippling stomach pain that often stopped her being able to work before she was diagnosed with uterus didelphys – sometimes called double uterus, a rare congenital abnormality.

She even became pregnant and gave birth prematurely to a daughter in 2010 without being diagnosed. She was still having periods while she was pregnant as the foetus was growing in her healthier right womb.

“I can be pregnant in my right womb and still have my menstrual periods through my left. This is why when I was pregnant with my daughter I was seeing blood,” she told BBC Pidgin’s Favour Nunoo in Accra.

After multiple surgeries, scans and medication, she finally understood what was happening with her body in 2015.

Ms Amoaa now wants the world to know about her plight, so other women do not have to suffer.

She faced a backlash when she first went public on a Ghanaian radio station talking about her condition, but is determined to educate people.

She has set up a charity called Speciallady Awareness and written a book, published last November, about her experience.

“My advice to women going through my kind of condition is: do not keep quiet; do not suffer in silence; seek early diagnosis and appropriate treatment – and remember, you are special,” she told the BBC.