Five days – that is how long it took Dah, a 14-year-old prospective mother from Côte d’Ivoire, to give birth. The child was stillborn and she developed obstetric fistula.
Although obstetric fistula has largely been eliminated in developed countries, more than two million women and girls still live with the painful and disfiguring condition, according to UN data.
Twenty-three-year-old Kodi Moumdau laughs with a group of young women in brightly coloured shawls in her ward at the National Fistula Centre [Centre National de Référence de Fistule Obstétricale] in the outskirts of Niamey, the capital of Niger. They can consider themselves amongst the lucky women who have been treated for and survived an obstetric fistula condition.
Around 60,000 women and girls in the developing world have benefitted from a programme initiated by the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA to treat obstetric fistula.
Obstetric fistula is a hole between the vagina and rectum or bladder that is caused by prolonged obstructed labour.
It leaves the woman incontinent and unable to control the flow of urine or feces or both.
