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Where Young Women Find Healing and Hope

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof mentions Fistula Foundation in an article about a fistula treatment center in Niger:

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Photo of Nicholas Kristof courtesy of Half the Sky Movement.

They straggle in by foot, donkey cart or bus: humiliated women and girls with their heads downcast, feeling ashamed and cursed, trailing stink and urine.

Some were married off at 12 or 13 years old and became pregnant before their malnourished bodies were ready. All suffered a devastating childbirth injury called an obstetric fistula that has left them incontinent, leaking urine and sometimes feces through their vaginas. Most have been sent away by their husbands, and many have endured years of mockery and ostracism as well as painful sores on their legs from the steady trickle of urine. Read full NYT story