We’re a 2024 Kristof Holiday Impact Prize winner!  Featured in The New York Times.   Read More

Fistula Foundation Named a 2024 Holiday Impact Prize Winner by Nicholas Kristof

No journalist in the world has done more than New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to bring attention to the plight of women like Foster who suffer needlessly from obstetric fistula.

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Today, at least one million women needlessly suffer from untreated obstetric fistula

They are women like Foster, from Zambia

While giving birth in 2009, Foster experienced prolonged and obstructed labor. As a result, she suffered from a childbirth injury known as obstetric fistula, which left her incontinent, humiliated, and shunned by her community. She leaked urine uncontrollably for the next 12 years of her life.

A single surgery healed Foster, and changed her future forever.

Like Foster, most women typically develop fistula in their early-to-mid 20s. Timely intervention and surgical repair enables a woman to reclaim 40 years or more of health and productivity.

Donate to help women like Foster.

“Those with fistula are completely voiceless: young, female, poor, rural, and ostracized. They are the 21st century’s lepers.”

Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist

Read about us in The New York Times >

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We're the global leader in fistula treatment

Since 2009, we have delivered more than 100,000 life-transforming surgeries at nearly 200 sites in 35 countries across Africa and Asia. No other organization brings healing to more women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries. We fund more fistula repair surgeries across more countries than any other organization, including the United Nations and the U.S. government.

Fistula Foundation is honored to be recognized as one of the recipients of this year’s Kristof Holiday Impact Prize, which celebrates organizations working to make the world a better place.

 

A gift of $619 can provide one woman with life-transforming surgery.

Give the most precious gift of health today.

Thanks to a collection of matching funds from generous donors, the first $200,000 in funds received were matched by an anonymous donor. An additional $150,000 in donations were doubled by Darren and Ling Lew, who have both served on the Fistula Foundation Board of Directors.