Washington, DC Tesfa Ineste Volunteers at December 2006 event

Let's give them hope!

This year 9,000 of our sisters in Ethiopia will suffer from obstetric fistula, the most devastating of all childbirth injuries. Those who are lucky enough to hear that their injuries are repairable at Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital must travel great distances to get to the hospital, located in the capital. Some are just too far away. That is why Tesfa Ineste was born.

Five mini-fistula hospitals are being built across Ethiopia to treat women who cannot travel to the capitol. The fourth of the five new hospitals opened in May 2008 in the town of Harrar in northeast Ethiopia. Tesfa Ineste, an Amharic phrase meaning "let’s give them hope" is the name the Fistula Foundation has chosen for the campaign to fund the building of the new Harrar hospital and help support its ongoing running expenses. (The other four hospitals are being built by other international organizations.)

Harrar Hospital Opens

The Harrar Hospital’s opening ceremony was Friday, May 9, 2008. The Hospital began accepting new patients on June 1, 2008. The Hospital has 40 beds and will serve fistula patients in Eastern Ethiopia.

Opening day of Harrar Hospital

The opening ceremony featured speeches by Dr. Catherine Hamlin, AAFH Founder; Richard Hamlin; Ato Tekalign Gedamu, AAFH Board Chair and Honorary Member of Fistula Foundation Board; Kassahun Kebede, Fistula Foundation Board Chair; Abaynesh Asrat, Fistula Foundation Board Member and Tesfa Ineste Chair, and Ethiopian Government Officials. The new Hospital in Harrar is the forth of five small regional fistula hospitals that has opened in the last three years to serve Ethiopian Women. Once all five hospitals are open and operating, the treatment capacity of Hamlin Fistula Hospitals will nearly triple.

Steve Saunders, FF Board Member, Anne Ferguson, FF Operations Director, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, Founder of AAFH, Abaynesh Asrat, FF Board Member, Kassahun Kebede, FF Board Chair, Kate Grant, FF Executive Director on Opening Day

The Harrar Hospital was funded exclusively by the Fistula Foundation and the Foundation’s Tesfa Ineste team. The Hospital’s cost was approximately $740,000. The Tesfa Ineste team raised $279,000 of this total, with the Foundation’s general fund providing the balance of the costs. The Tesfa Ineste program is chaired by Fistula Foundation Board Member, Abaynesh Asrat. The program has fundraising committees in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, with by far the largest program in the Washington, DC area. Chaired by Tsedale Assefa, the DC committee raised approximately 2/3rds of the funds raised for the Tesfa Ineste program to date. Many, many thanks go to the Ethiopian-American community for their dedicated efforts to help raise the funds that made the Harrar Hospital’s construction possible.

Plaque on the front of the new Hospital, honoring the Fistula Foundation and Tesfa Ineste