Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital

On Sunday 17th February 2008, Linda led a group of walkers around the village of Wentworth in Rotherham and the surrounding Follies in aid of the Fistula Hospital, as part of this year's fundraising activities.

For details and pictures from Linda's fundraising dinner on March 6th 2008, please click here.

In March 2006, Linda organised her first fundraising dinner in Wakefield for the hospital. More than 120 women attended, and £7,000 was raised - enough to fund the complete treatment of 14 women. To find out more, click here.

While visiting Ethiopia in late February 2004, I visited a remarkable hospital, pioneered by an even more remarkable woman and her late husband. Catherine Hamlin arrived in Ethiopia from Australia with her husband Reg in 1959 . Young doctors, they soon came across a gynaecological problem, long since forgotten in the West and totally preventable, the “vaginal fistula”. Universally, 5% of all pregnant women will require a caesarean. But in the isolated villages of Ethiopia, caesareans are not an option. Expectant mothers, small, teenage, malnourished girls, can struggle on in labour for days, only to give birth to a dead child and wake up with a fistula (hole) in either the bladder or rectum, leaving them in pain and incontinent.

I met some of these women at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital which Catherine and Reg Hamlin raised the money to build. The women waited patiently outside in pools or urine. They had travelled for days from their villages. A newcomer told me her story. Aged just 15 but looking 4 years younger, Anna (not her real name) was married at puberty to a village boy and pregnant within a year. 4 days in labour produced a dead baby and a fistula. Soon enough, her young husband asked her to return to her parents. Unable to cope with the offensive smell, they built her a hut to live alone. She became desperate until she heard about the Fistula hospital from another girl who had received treatment. To get her to Addis Ababa, Anna’s father would have to have sold a cow or some other precious possession just to pay the bus fare.

After a fairly routine operation, dressed in a new dress, Anna will soon be returning to her family, fit and well. The hospital also offers a comprehensive service to its patients. Women are given plenty of time to convalesce. When they are ready to go home, they will be taken to the bus station and their bus ticket paid for. Women unable to return home because their medical complications require ongoing care, are employed in the hospital making clothes for the recovering patients or in the bakery. A physiotherapy unit to help women get mobile is available and classes on women’s rights and literacy are also given. A village for girls unable to return home has also been built in the suburbs of Addis where they are working on crafts and agriculture.

Anna and the other women in the Fistula hospital are the lucky ones. But thousands of other women go untreated which is why, before she retires, Dr Hamlin is determined to expand her work and ensure it has a future. She wants to build outreach centres in the outlying villages and train midwives to get women to hospital so that girls like Anna can once again lead normal lives.

Linda McAvan

They need your help

March 8th is International Women’s Day. Women’s lives have improved beyond recognition in Britain and other rich countries, though we still have some way to go. But unless we do something, women like Anna will not even get off first base. A fistula is a preventable condition, virtually unknown in the West, which is causing needless suffering.

What you can do?

Those in a position to, could arrange a fundraising event or make a one off donation. Everyone can tell a friend and raise public awareness of this little known epidemic. One off donations can be sent to Hamlin Churchill Childbirth Injuries Fund, Bradfield House, Popes Lane, Oldbury,West Midlands B69 4PA. Cheques made payable to Hamlin Churchill Childbirth Injuries Fund. They need confirmation of UK taxpayers, in order to claim back your tax from the Government. Further information is available on the website www.charitynet.org/~HCCIF or email hccif@aol.com

Want to know more about development issues? Linda is always happy to come and speak to organisations/groups about the work of the European Union, particularly in relation to development issues. Please contact our office at the address below.