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View a slideshow of photos from the Aberdeen Women's Centre. |
At the Aberdeen Women’s Centre (AWC) in Freetown, Sierra Leone, women from around the country receive life-changing surgery to repair obstetric fistula. This year, AWC opened an emergency obstetric services department so that more women have the chance to avoid developing this devastating and eminently preventable condition. |MORE
Hanna Ingber Win
The Huffington Post
Oct. 1, 2009
Like 94 percent of Ethiopian women, Dima went into labor at home without access to a skilled birthing attendant. Too young and undeveloped to be giving birth, Dima's body could not handle the labor. The baby's head pushed down on her pelvic bone, not yet wide enough to let the baby pass naturally, for 48 hours.
Dima eventually gave birth, but the baby had died during the protracted labor. Plus, the prolonged pressure caused the tissue between her bladder and vagina to die. A hole called an obstetric fistula formed. |MORE
Future Choices TV episode
airing March 2010
Future Choices hosted a private screening of A Walk to Beautiful which is recapped in the March TV episode, moderated by Carrie Ngongo of EngenderHealth. She adulates the award winning feature-length documentary A Walk to Beautiful, which tells the poignant stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from obstetric fistula and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Using the film as a jumping off point she expands on what can/should be strategies for reducing the incidence of obstetric fistula, reshaping health institutions to improve treatment, and reintegrating repaired women back into their communities.
Future Choices TV episode
airing January 2010
One hundred years after obstetric fistula was eliminated in developed countries, this birth injury remains a major peril to millions of young women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and some Arab States. In January 2010 Future Choices travels to Ethiopia via Engel Entertainment's award-winning documentary to follow five Ethiopian women on their "Walk to Beautiful."
Allison Shigo, co-producer of the widely acclaimed documentary film, Walk to Beautiful, reveals the causes of obstetric fistula, introduces us to Wubete...|MORE
Allison Shigo, co-producer of the documentary, A Walk to Beautiful, has taken up the cause of women afflicted with obstetric fistula, writing an article about the film for the Huffington Post and establishing a special non-profit corporation to help empower women suffering from severe childbirth injuries.
EngenderHealth Addresses Obstetric Fistula 
Obstetric fistula, a debilitating complication of childbirth, persists in many developing countries. The Fistula Care Project is helping to strengthen fistula management and prevention services worldwide. For more information about the Fistula Care Project, please visit www.fistulacare.org .
Sifa’s Story
Program Background
The Fistula Care Project is a five-year cooperative agreement funded by USAID and managed by EngenderHealth. The Project works...|MORE
Learn From My Story: Women Confront Fistula in Rural Uganda is a series of testimonials from women who have experienced obstetric fistula and wanted to share their stories in their own words, using their own photographs and drawings. Eleven "digital stories" recount hardships and celebrate achievements related to the women's daily struggles with pregnancy, loss, and relationships, as well as their search for safety, acceptance, and dignity. |MORE
Americans for UNFPA
Engender Health
Family Care International
Fistula Foundation
One by One
United Nations Foundation
Campaign to End Fistula [United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)]
USAID Maternal and Child Health
Women’s Dignity Project
|MORE
Ethiopia steps up fight against fistula
Women with obstetric fistula in Ethiopia have a better chance of receiving care than other patients in Africa, thanks to the country's dedicated hospital for the condition. But still too few can access treatment and too many new injuries happen every year. Wairagala Wakabi reports in Lancet.
Ethiopia boasts the best infrastructure for obstetric fistula treatment in Africa and is also one of the countries where UN bodies, local and international agencies, and governmental efforts have coalesced to address |MORE
 A Brighter Future: Restoring Dignity to Women with Obstetric Fistula
By Marielena Zuniga
- Terefa was 13 when her labor pains started. Poor and
living in a rural African village, she had no access to medical
care. When the contractions became more violent and painful, her mother, mother-in-law and traditional birth
attendant were called.
Slipping in and out of consciousness, the girl was exhausted
from labor. Her pelvis was too small to handle the delivery
and the baby could not come out. The village elders finally
decided that Terefa needed to get to a hospital. But that
was miles away...|MORE
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- "KATSINA, Nigeria - Dr. Kees Waaldijk began surgery shortly before 10 a.m. one recent Saturday in a cement-walled operating room in this city near Nigeria's northern border. More than five hours later, orderlies carried the last of four girls to the recovery ward. In the near-90 degree heat, Dr. Waaldijk's light blue surgical garb had turned dark with sweat." |MORE
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- "In a corrugated iron shack in the outskirts of the village, they find a young woman. Hands and feet bound together, hips contracted, muscles wasted." Read further, a review of two movies revealing the horrors of obstetric fistula in September 2006 issue of Lancet.
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- "Zola, a six-year-old girl, was lying in her mother's arms as they sat in their yard at dusk. Suddenly, a group of five militiamen came in shooting and tore Zola away. Her mother begged the men to take her in exchange for her daughter, but they refused; they had come for the little girl.
The child was found the next day in her school, her tiny legs tied to two benches, bathed in blood. As a result of the rape, Zola had suffered a devastating traumatic fistula injury. While the doctors in Goma said that Zola would survive, her mother lamented that she could never marry."
In The Hidden Consequence of War we are taken into "shadows of the world’s most violent conflicts" to learn about traumatic fistula and discover how courageous medical practitioners are helping the afflicted.
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- "Because of the population fistulas affect, the issue attracts little attention and even fewer resources," states Toronto's Globe and Mall in its May 23 article on the problem of obstetric fistula. Read further here.
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- According to the Washington Times March 5 article about obstetric fistula in Ethiopia, "The Hamlin Trust, an organization that runs three hospitals in Ethiopia, estimates that about 150,000 women in the country have the condition." Read further about the impact of obstetric fistula on this impoverished country and the Hamlin Trust's work to alleviate the suffering.
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- " Traveling doctors go to Africa and Asia to repair fistulas,
avoidable childbirth injuries, little known in the U.S., that can destroy a mother's reasons for living..." Read further in Baltimore Sun examination of obstetric fistula in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia.
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- EngenderHealth has launched an ambitious program to reduce the incidence of obstetric fistula in Guinea. Read more about this tragic outgrowth of inadequate prenatal care and EngenderHealth's strategy for enabling developing nations to deal with it.
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- The first report ever to map obstetric fistula in sub-Saharan Africa revealed that the condition is appallingly widespread. Read further about this ground-breaking documentation produced as a joint project by EngenderHealth and UNFPA.
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- A powerful video clip portraying the trauma inflicted by obstetric fistula.
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- "Ask a person from the developed world about “obstetric fistula” and it’s likely you’ll get a blank stare..." -->>Read further for better understanding of this dreadful affliction.
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- "An obscure health problem that affects only women..." -->>Read further about this "crisis that modern public health systems have failed to address adequately."
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- The story of Ngozi, a young woman in a rural, isolated village in Africa struggling to give birth and in desperate need of basic medical assistance is the classic story of the prelude to obstetric fistula. -->>Read further.
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- The devastating childbirth injury, obstetric fistula is widespread in the developing world, where an estimated 2 million women suffer from the debilitating aftereffects of prolonged obstructed labor. -->>Read further in The Facts about Obstetric Fistula: The Hidden Heartbreak.
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What is it? Where is it found?
