Hope Hospital: A Beacon for Fistula Patients in Bangladesh

Fistula Foundation is proud to support the work of our partners at the Hope Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh.

By Dr. Tareq Salahuddin

Cox’s Bazar Women and Children’s Hospital — a project of Hope Foundation serves the people living in remotest area of Bangladesh. In some specialised services like fistula operation, they provide tertiary care at free of cost which is even rare in some district level hospitals.

The Cox’s Bazar Women and Children’s Hospital, which is more known as Hope Hospital started service mainly in maternal and child care. With the support of some donor organisation, it provides with quality care in fistula operation for the women who suffer with their problem in silence.

During a prolong obstructed labour, the baby’s head is constantly pushing against the mother’s pelvic bone causing tissue to die due to lack of blood flow to this area. All of that pushing creates a hole (a fistula) between the birth passage and an internal organ such as the bladder or rectum. A woman cannot hold her urine, and sometimes bowel content as well. This is a miserable condition whose consequence cannot be described literarily.

A woman with fistula is usually rejected by her husband because of her inability to bear more children and her foul smell. She is shunned by her community and forced to live an isolated existence. These women suffer profound psychological trauma resulting from their utter loss of status and dignity, in addition to suffering constantly from their physical internal injury.

Repair of a fistula is time consuming; in most cases the surgery needs to be performed repeatedly to heal a case completely. Moreover, it requires specialised training and skill which are not adequately available in Bangladesh.

The Hope Hospital started fistula repair with the support from Fistula Foundation which now has expanded their services in many folds in different dimensions. The hospital now has a full time available fistula surgeon Dr. Nrinmoy Biswas who got training from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

Continue reading this article on the NewsHour website –>

You can also read another article by Dr. Salahuddin about Hope Foundation, on The Daily Star website –>

 

Published Nov 16, 2015

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