In Ethiopia, 80% of women give birth at home without the assistance of a doctor or midwife. Every year approximately 22,000 Ethiopian women and girls die as a result of complications during pregnancy or childbirth.
Fistula is one of the common childbirth related disabilities, the result of a prolonged and agonizing obstructed labor. Often the babies are stillborn, while the mothers are left with a chronic medical condition. These women suffer nerve damage and lose the ability to walk. Many of these women are abandoned by their husbands and rejected by their communities, left to live in isolation. According to the United Nations, more than two million women worldwide live with fistula, with 100,000 new cases each year.
Yet fistula is both preventable and treatable.
Most fistulas can be completely repaired with a 60-minute surgery. It’s an hour that can totally transform a woman’s life. It can also give a woman the chance to have a child again. Ethiopiaid is working with some of the leading fistula hospitals in Ethiopia to provide free obstetric fistula repair surgeries to women across the country.
Help us cure and prevent obstetric fistula. Sign your name today and support life-changing treatment for women in Ethiopia!
