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Loading...The Lepers of the 21st Century: Women and Girls Suffering from Obstetric Fistulas
“Perhaps the most wretched people on this planet are those suffering obstetric fistulas,” says Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times Sunday column.
Who are these poor “wretched people?”
Most often they are pregnant young teenagers living in Africa or Asia who develop complications while giving birth. Without fully developed pelvises, these girls suffer agonizing labors resulting in internal injuries that leave them with a hole between their bladder, vagina, and sometimes rectum. The result: the baby is stillborn and the mother is left incontinent – constantly trickling urine and sometimes feces from her vagina.
Because she smells so badly and is unable to control her bladder and bowel movements she is often abandoned by her husband and ostracized by her village. She is left to suffer alone despite a simple surgery that can cure her.
For millions of women and young girls in the poorest countries around the world, fistula is a tragic problem affecting one out of every 12 women in Africa and approximately three million women worldwide. For these women Dr. Lewis Wall, an OB-GYN from Washington University in St. Louis, is their hero.
“There’s no more rewarding experience for a surgeon than a successful fistula repair,” says Dr. Wall. “There are a lot of operations you do that solve a problem — I can take out a uterus that has a tumor in it. But this is life-transforming for everybody who gets it done. It’s astonishing. You take a human being who has been in the abyss of despair and — boom! — you have a transformed woman. She has her life back.”
Wall has dedicated his life to repairing women with fistulas and in 1995 he founded and is currently president of the Worldwide Fistula Fund which supports international medical education and research on the problem of obstetric fistulas. For years he has campaigned to build a fistula hospital in West Africa – a project that was recently approved by the West African country of Niger.
Modeled on the successful Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia (watch a powerful video about the hospital here), Wall’s hospital will also work to promote maternal health and reduce pregnancy related deaths, as well as advocate for education and micro-finance efforts to empower women. This is just the first of 40 hospitals Wall plans to build in the world’s poorest countries to eradicate fistulas worldwide. Over 12 years with a total budget of $1.5-1.6 billion, the project would serve as an American foreign assistance program. According to Kristof, the plan is being circulated in Congress, the State Department, and the White House as well as among religious and aid organizations.
A woman dies every minute in childbirth and for every death there are 20 more women who are injured giving birth. Obstetric fistulas are one of the most horrendous injuries pregnant women endure and they are both preventable and curable, yet millions of women and girl continue to needlessly suffer.
Like Kristof I “can’t conceive of a better investment” than Wall’s plan to eradicate fistulas globally and in doing so give victims back their lives.
Let’s hope the President agrees.
Learn more:
- Watch an inspiring video of Mamitu , an illiterate surgeon working at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, who has become one of the leading surgeons of fistulas and a trainer of surgeons from all over the world.
- Learn more about Dr. Catherine Hamlin who co-founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital with her late husband Dr. Reginald.
Interested in updates and other ramblings from me? Follow my every move on Twitter – http://twitter.com/XimenaR21.
Read more: africa, asia, Fistula, kristof, maternal health, pregnancy, womens health, womens rights
Photo courtesy of the Worldwide Fistula Fund - http://www.wfmic.org/
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Recent Comments from Causes
Disgraceful.
Happy days, Mason! Beautiful boy. Thankyou for helping the 3 dogs.
Deplorable.
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52 comments
+ add your ownDr Mukwege and Dra Hamlin deserves NOBEL PRIZE right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you Ximena!
This is a terrible problem, but I'm glad someone is helping these poor women and girls! I have heard only good things of Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her hospital, in fact, there's at least one book written about it :) And I'm also very pleased to hear about the Worldwide Fistula Fund, I hope it helps thousands of women globally. If I had something to contribute, I would...maybe someday...
All I can say about Phoenix Q - "Some mother do have them"
...But for the grace of God, go I...
First of all, they are too young to have children...
Pheonix, you're an imbecile...
The who reason Africa is a poor country is because us wealthy nations (such as England and America) won't cut/stop the intrest on the Debt we have bestowed upon them, let alone stopping the debt.
FYI for everyone, no Debts will ever be struck to 0, because they need debt to make it look like there is money in the world.
PLEASE, EVERYONE, EDUCATE YOURSELF:- google: Money As Debt and watch the video.
Are you saying the god-knows-how-many-million tax money that goes into warfare is money better spent?
Onto the main article however, I think it's brilliant that someone is dedicating their lives to helping people, but as I read... well I know that certain areas are backward, and I knew that Female Genital Mutilation (Circumcision, Cutting or Sowing) was still ongoing, but obviously no where near the extent that it is!
If that is a major cause, then surly the people need to be educated, and brought into the 21st century!
It's a crying, shameful thought that in most countries (as in undervelloped both in Education, Science, Religion and Mind) consider women to be secon class citizens and do with them whatever they wish as if they weren't a living sentient being...
Wish I had something to give.
Phoenix Q you are a sick excuse for a human! Have you not a mother, sister?? You are sick!
Thank you for this article.
I have been watching the discussion of this topic for over a week.
The comment(s) made by Phoenix Q are so typical of the negative attitude that religious ZELOTS (non spiritual people with me/materialism/compassionless etc etal) people use to save themselves from the loving truth and gentle acts of kindness that "real" loving people are trying to achieve w/o forcing it down others throats.
I believe they think like a rock and live like a rock and wish they would crawl underneath the rock they came from. That would be an interesting vision to see and for others to learn "what not to do" to become a "ugly", but misunderstood human(?) being.
All the quotations or other types of colourful notations are the hidden reason that others (with loving, reasoning and positive communicative skills) might understand and reason I would not want to add any further discourse to such a beautiful and unconditionial loving forum...
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