Hidden Tragedy - Fistulas

I just finished reading The Hospital by the River - by Dr. Catherine Hamlin, which is one of many books I'm reading for school. And this book is just amazing, I mean it isn't going to win great literary awards, but the story, the facts, the truth that it unveils are all just enormously important. And to most people probably just shocking!
Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her husband Reg are two Ob/Gyn doctors who moved to Ethiopia in 1959 to start a midwifery school. And soon after arriving begin to see an enormous tragedy going almost completely unnoticed - the lives of women with fistulas.
For thousands of women every year a fistula is the result of a prolonged labour and birth without medical care. The woman (or girl) may come away from 4-7 days of labour with a stillborn child and and hole from her bladder and sometimes from her rectum, into her birth canal. This makes the women completely incontinent and means that she is always wet, dirty and smelly. Her husband leaves her and her community ostracizes her. She is alone.
This is the horrible truth for some 2 million women around the world - mostly in Africa. In North America, medical care is such that fistulas are virtually unheard of, and if one did arise it would be quickly cured by surgery. But for these poor and forgotten women it becomes their reality, defining their lives, or lack there of. And most of them are never cured.
I realize that this might be shocking or even uncomfortable for some of you, but I won't apologize. I've tried to be as discrete and polite as I could given the subject matter. But I want you to know that this is real, its a modern day tragedy, and it is vastly ignored! If you are shocked - let that emotion quide you to prayer and to action!
Fistulas are 100% curable in more than 90% of all cases. That means that almost all women who have this conditon can be given back their lives, if only they could get treatment. Dr. Hamlin and her husband started a Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa which today treats some 1400 women a year, serving them out of Christ's deep love. And for the sad few that can not be cured, they still receive as much care as possible and are welcomed in to help within the hospital or become a part of a new village full of similar women, where they can learn agriculture, farming and handcrafts.
But there are thousands of women who can not afford or manage the trip the Addis Ababa, there are women in other countries, all of them are in need and the fact is that they can be cured! And they deserve to be cured, and loved and accepted! Then there is the Hamlin's fistula hospital that offers care completely free, and needs to fundraise all fo its expenses every year. Could you get involved and begin to help meet these needs?
Alan was speaking on Sunday about getting the info and then praying. Well folks I hope that you will apply that lesson to this news as well. What you've just read is a start - hopefully enough to make you aware, or give you a kick in the pants if you needed it! But I hope that you take the time to become fully educated - there is the book I mentioned above, there are many websites. There is lots more you can know, there is lots that you can do. Please - DO SOMETHING!

• Fistula Hospital - Addia Ababa, Ethiopia
• Fistula Foundation
• Amazon - Buy the Book!