We don’t know how lucky we are in the Western World, we don’t have to have unassisted births
I have just watched a show on ABC Four Corners about Fistula. I thought that I had a bad life but I have finally found someone who has had a worse time than me. There was a girl that was forced to marry at 12. Her name was Uberta. Uberta ran away because she didn’t want to be married.
Her father beat her and she was married off again only to run away once more. The fourth time her husband got her pregnant and so Uberta stayed with him. There were problems during labour. You see, they don’t go to hospital in Ethiopia. They have their babies in the village. Sometimes the baby doesn’t come on the first day. Nor the second or third day. Sometimes they are in labour for 10 days and then someone pulls the baby out for them. The baby doesn’t always survive.
Book by Dr Catherine Hamlin
The pressure of the baby trying to get out puts pressure on the woman’s bladder. That part of the bladder dies off and drops out leaving a permanent hole in the bladder. This means that the woman permanently urinates through her vagina because there is nothing to stop it. She is unable to do the normal tasks of the day. She is shunned by her family because she smells. Her husband will sometimes send her home to her family. But they are shocked to find out how much she smells, and quite often don’t want her there either.
There is a hospital set up in Ethiopia where the women travel long hours to have an operation that will close the hole in their bladder. Uberta travelled there for her operation. The operation was not successful as her bladder was too badly damaged and small. Australian doctors travelled over there to try a system where she can insert a plug in her urinal tube and manually release it when she goes to the toilet. This system worked for her and she was happy.
I felt for her so much. She was only 17 years old and had been through so much. She thought that suicide was her only way out of life. Now she has found a job at an orphanage and has been assigned children to look after. She is now happy and getting an education too.
The doctors at the hospital are trying to teach pregnant women that when they feel the baby walking in their tummy then that is when they need to start walking to a hospital to have their child.
We take western medicine so much for granted. I knew that childbirth was a life threatening situation but I didn’t know that it was possible to remain in labour for such a long time like that. And that such horrible damage could be done to our bladder with the pressure of a child pushing against it for so long.
Some of the women had Fistula for 6 years before making it to the hospital for help. There are 100,000 women still waiting for their operations in Ethiopia. Thankfully they have a 93% success rate. It was wonderful to see such smiles on the women when they were able to have the pleasure of standing there in dry clothes.
The name of the hospital was the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. Dr Catherine Hamlin is Australian and is the executive director of the hospital, she has been there since 1959.
Please go here to donate some money to help them.
