June 28, 2006, 08:45
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has launched a campaign to raise money to prevent and treat obstetric fistula, a pregnancy related injury that disables hundreds of thousands of women each year, mainly in Africa and South Asia. The women are left in pain, suffering incontinence and often cast-out by their community. The UN says on top of coping with a stillborn baby, many women hide themselves away because they are so embarrassed by their condition. Now the Fund is launching a campaign to bring the problem into the open.
It is estimated that there are 20 to 50 000 new cases of obstetric fistula each year, on top of the millions of women, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia who already live with the condition.
Obstetric fistulas occur when a protracted labour results in tissue separating the womb from the bladder or the rectum dying. This creates a hole leaving the woman incontinent, often disabled, in great pain, and unable to conceive again.
Gloria Esebona, a British obstetric gynaecologist in Nigeria, says at least one million women there suffer the condition.
Following up on a major meeting in Johannesburg last year, the UN is hoping to raise awareness with a new campaign, saying the condition can be both prevented and treated easily, but more resources must be put into maternal health care.
The UN, which is working with 35 countries on this issue, the majority in Africa, says it also hopes that governments will try to dissuade the marriage of young girls, who are at great risk of developing the condition in childbirth. Those behind the campaign are aiming to raise $75 million over five years to help those women whose lives have been blighted by fistula and to save the lives of their children.
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