For International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, CEO Kate Grant writes on The Guardian on why a million women still suffer from obstetric fistula.
I had never seen so many patients hospitalised in a single room – perhaps 60 beds, each with a woman. They had not been injured in war, they had been left incontinent from childbirth and somehow found their way to Dr Catherine Hamlin’s Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital for help. The simple act of trying to give birth had resulted in an obstetric fistula, an injury that devastates the lives of a million women in Africa and Asia.
Why do a million women still suffer the treatable condition of fistula?
Published on: May 23, 2016