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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

of course if your insides get ripped up while giving birth

(Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Inno Usman, 25, waited for surgery this month in Babbar Ruga Hospital in Nigeria. She suffered from an obstetric fistula, an injury, suffered by many African women, that can be prevented with a Caesarean section.)


you are no longer good to any damn one! once again, second class citizens on the march (to hell)

Nightmare for African Women: Birthing Injury and Little Help

By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: September 28, 2005
KATSINA, Nigeria - Dr. Kees Waaldijk began surgery shortly before 10 a.m. one recent Saturday in a cement-walled operating room in this city near Nigeria's northern border. More than five hours later, orderlies carried the last of four girls to the recovery ward. In the near-90 degree heat, Dr. Waaldijk's light blue surgical garb had turned dark with sweat. "We are finished for the day," he barked.
It was the last thing the dozen girls who squatted in the open-air corridor outside wanted to hear. Leaping up, tracking wet footprints and soaked skirts across the floor, they besieged the towering, white-haired surgeon, holding out orange case files, their names scrawled on them in black marker.
"Big eyes, with a question mark: 'When is it my turn?' " he said later in his office, filled with medical books, suture-filled suitcases and damp socks and T-shirts hung on chairs to dry. He held up his hands. "The eyes are following you everywhere you go. I tell them it is one man, two hands and many women."
What brings the girls to Dr. Waaldijk - and him to Nigeria - is the obstetric nightmare of fistulas, unknown in the West for nearly a century. Mostly teenagers who tried to deliver their first child at home, the girls failed at labor. Their babies were lodged in their narrow birth canals, and the resulting pressure cut off blood to vital tissues and ripped holes in their bowels or urethras, or both.
Now their babies were dead. And the would-be mothers, their insides wrecked, were utterly incontinent. Many had become outcasts in their own communities - rejected by their husbands, shunned by neighbors, too ashamed even to step out of their huts............

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for including the NYT article on fistula in your blog. To me, it is just not acceptable for any woman to suffer from such a preventable, easy to fix condition.

I was moved to act by the suffering of these women and co-founded a volunteer initiative, One By One, that is raising awareness and funds for the UN Population Fund's Campaign to End Fistula. As the article points out, $300 is all it costs to bring a woman suffering from this tragic and debilitating condition back to life. One By One uses a giving circle model, where one leader gives $30 and then asks nine friends, family members, neighbors or co-workers to do the same. Together the circle raises $300 - enough money to cover the care for one woman with fistula.

Since our launch in April we have raised over $20,000, enough money to care for 65 women with fistula.

Again, thanks for your help in raising awareness for these women with no voice.

Unknown said...

thank you for leaving your link AND for doing something katya. i will get my checkbook out AND email some of my friends. it amazes me still to this day how women are treated all over the world.