"If 20,000 men's penises were falling off, the world would stop"
It's been hailed as a no-fuss, straight-forward and safe contraceptive solution. Women who no longer wanted to fall pregnant could have this simple device implanted without surgery in a 15-minute procedure and it would effectively sterilize them, permanently.
Essure, a device by medical giant Bayer promises no more pills, no more troublesome IUDs.
It was hoped this approach, developed in part by an Adelaide specialist, would revolutionize female reproductive health around the world. So far 750,000 women have been sold on its safety and reliability and had it implanted.
But for at least 21,000, it has failed or left them in terrible medical trouble
NSW woman Nina fell pregnant three times despite the manufacturer's claims of near certain prevention.
Essure promised a 99.8 percent protection against pregnancy whereas tubal ligation was 96 percent.
"So that made me feel confident that of this was I wouldn’t get pregnant with Essure."
Then she fell pregnant. Four months on from her first pregnancy, with essure coils embedded her fallopian tubes, nina was forced to make a decision she thought she’d never have to make.
She terminated her pregnancy.
"I went back to my doctors and he reassured me that it was an anomaly, I was a freak of nature or something and that was it."
But then it happened again.
"I was horrified I thought what’s wrong with me? I just thought what’s wrong with me."
Nina couldn’t face another termination. She decided she’d have the child.
"I kept on having nightmares of the coils poking my baby. Yeah I had a lot of anxiety though that pregnancy."
She now has a happy healthy 5 year old, but Essure had one more surprise or Nina.
"Then two years ago I found out that I was pregnant again and I guess that’s what made me think that I needed to do something because I had these foreign objects in my body and they weren’t working."
But now women like Nina are fighting back, determined to hold the Bayer to account and to get the device withdrawn from the market.
And they've got a powerful ally on their side.
Legendary consumer advocate and determined campaigner Erin Brockovich is on the case with a withering assessment of Bayer's response.
The regulatory flaws that allowed it to be declared safe without proper independent study and that now prevent many women from suing the manufacturer for damages.
Thousands of those women are reporting major complications, excruciating pain, haemorrhaging and punctured organs. Some have seen the implant migrate to other parts of their body or shatter into small pieces.
Brockovich is fighting for their right to take action against Bayer and have Essure taken out of circulation.
Watch the full story in the video above.
