Nicholas Kristoff wrote an article about Dr. Steven Arrowsmith and Dr. Lewis Wall, who had the dream of opening a hospital in Western Africa to treat women with fistulas. Thanks to the article, and the 500,000 raised, that hospital has opened in Niger. Here’s more from a May 12 article about the need for this hospital.
The hospital has also started an outreach program to provide prenatal care, family planning and other help for maternal and child health. The aim is to save lives as well as prevent fistulas.
Fistulas are suffered by an estimated 2 million women and girls.
Left untreated, women and girls with fistulas become pariahs. Their husbands divorce them, and they are moved to a hut at the edge of the village. They lie there in pools of their waste, feeling deeply ashamed, trying to avoid food and water because of the shame of incontinence, and eventually they die of an infection or simple starvation.
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