 The existance of fistula is the barometer of maternal health in a country. If year by year fistula decreases, we know that maternal health is improving.
Dr Outtara, Fistula Surgeon, Mail
Fistula is the most devastating of all child-birthing injuries. After a long delivery, the baby usually dies, and the woman is left with chronic incontinence. The social consequences of fistula are however for many the hardest to bear.
Fistula is caused by obstructed labour: the pressure from the baby's head on soft tissue in the birth passage causes the flesh to die, leaving the mother with a hole to her bladder or rectum through which she will leak urine, and sometimes feces, continuously, for the rest of her life. During the prolonged labor, often lasting up to five days, the baby usually also dies.
SI endured five days of delivery. I was finally transferred to the hospital, the child was dead. After 3 weeks, I started to feel flows, the odour was very bad. The situation has persisted for 10 years.
26-year-old woman, Equatorial Guinea
The physical suffering a woman with fistula endures is relentless. Moreover, due to the leaking and resulting smell, women are abandoned and pushed to the edges of society, unable to board a bus, enter a hospital, or share a meal with others. The loss of dignity and social exclusion is for many women the hardest to bear.
Everyone deserted me - my husband deserted me, my friends deserted me. I know I will never have a husband, I will never have a boyfriend, I will never have a baby. So I just live by myself.
Fatmata, Sierra Leone
I am distasteful in the eyes of others, It is God's will.
48-year-old woman, Mali
I will be able to go to church again. I will be able to help a bit in the fields. I will be able to go shopping and to go on the back of someone's bicycle - all the things that other people normally do.
Rukia from Tanzania, as quoted by BBC
Because women with fistula are hidden away or live in isolation, the scope and severity of the tragedy has not been widely recognized. Yet, obstetric fistula affects more than two million women and girls living in poverty in the developing world. The majority of these sufferers are girls aged 12-18.
The good news is, however, that obstetric fistula can be both prevented as well as treated.
TRUESTORIES
If it is going to be true that I will be cured, I want to have another baby. Even when I am very much afraid that the same problem would happen again. A boy or a girl: I would love either one so much. Just let it be true.
—A woman awaiting fistula surgery in a UNFPA-supported project in Eritrea
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