SUMMER, 2007
In this issue:
• Letter from Dr. Catherine Hamlin
• A Walk to Beautiful wins Audience Award at San Francisco International Film Festival
• Formation of "International Society of Fistula Surgeons"
• Foundation funds effort to develop International Training Standards
• Hospital begins Midwifery Project to Help Prevent Fistula
• Update from Desta Mender - Joy Village
Click here to give a young Ethiopian woman her dignity—and get a little of your own
A publication of
Suite 265
Santa Clara, CA 95050
Tel: 408.249.9596
Toll-free: 866.756.3700
Fax: 408.244.7328
info@fistulafoundation.org
Groundbreaking for New Hospital in Harrar
The plans for the mini-hospital in Harar are taking shape. Construction began in May after signing a contract with MAFER Construction Company and the building is scheduled to be completed by the end of March or early April 2008. The official opening will coincide with the Hospital's bi-yearly meeting of its International partners in April 2008.
Potential doctors who would run the new Harar center are now being interviewed. Mark Bennett, the Hospital CEO, is also now seeking nurses. He already has 12 Nurse Aides in training who will be assigned to the Harar facility when it is open.
The excavation and the foundation for the new hospital have just begun. The Hospital has the support and encouragement of the regional health authorities. Further, the Hospital will be working with the Harar authorities and also the Oromia region since this region surrounds the Harar city region and many patients will come from Oromia zones. Oromia have agreed to provide support by allocating a doctor from their region to work at the Harar Hospital.
We are grateful for the hard work of the Tesfa Ineste group of Ethiopian-Americans who have been so active in supporting this initiative.
Architect's drawing of Harar Hospital
A letter from Dr. Catherine Hamlin, Founder Fistula Hospital
Dr. Catherine Hamlin
Dear Friends,
I want to thank so many of you for sending me messages while I was in hospital in London, and then convalescing with my son and his family. I had wonderful treatment and care, and was touched by all the cards, emails, messages and letters. I was indeed very spoilt. My son Richard and his wife Diana said they had never had so many flowers in their house, in the depth of winter!
I am happy to be back at work. I usually work with another senior doctor at another operating table, and often too, a Trainee. We will soon have five operating days, as our load of patients is so great! Nine fistula patients arrived from Kenyan Somalia! Sent by World Vision and nowhere to put them, so we have been using some houses at Desta Mender, as waiting hostels!
Over the last few weeks, at the Hospital, we have had many visitors. Ruth Kennedy has been especially busy, she never misses an opportunity to put a word in for the midwifery training and the impact this will have on prevention. We are making some good progress toward starting the Training School, and have already received written permission from the Ministry of Health to start. We have asked the Ethiopian Government for extra land adjacent to our Desta Mender compound, and hope this will be granted to us.
For me, this plan to help prevent obstetric fistula, is a particularly significant development. When my husband and I first came to Ethiopia, it was to set up midwifery training for nurses. It is exciting, now to be able to continue doing this, and to help prevent these devastating and tragic injuries, which we have been treating for all these years. It will also make a difference to the appalling maternal death rate.
The need for this midwifery school was brought home to me vividly when I was in the ward yesterday. Lying in one of the beds was a young patient from a distant province. Her life was in ruins after her first and only experience of childbirth. One kidney was totally destroyed and the other was failing. Her bladder was non existent. All, the result of her the long obstructed labour and her fistula injuries. Surely the need is urgent, to save these poor girls and women from such appalling injuries.
Often as I pray, I thank God for so many of you who give generously enabling us to expand and do more for these deserving and forgotten mothers. Your love and concern for them warms my heart, and I thank you for all you do to help us to look after these beloved women.
I wish you all joy and God's blessing in your lives,
Catherine Hamlin
Board Of Directors
Abaynesh Asrat |
Allan Rosenfield, MD |
Latest News
- Reuters News: On March 30, 2007, Reuters' reporter Elana Ringer published "Beyond stillbirth, shame: Women with fistula". The moving article described the work being done at the new mini-hospital in Bahr Dar to repair women with fistula injuries and return them to health and dignity.
- Foundation friend Mary Calvert wins National Press Photographers
Association, Photojournalist of the Year: In April, Mary
Calvert, photographer with the Washington Times won the coveted award.
A cornerstone of her portfolio was pictures taken at the Bahr Dar Hospital in 2006. - University of California in DC: On May 30, 2007, Fistula Foundation Executive Director, Kate Grant, spoke to students at the University of California's program in Washington, D.C. Thanks to Elizabeth Victoreen of UCDC, and daughter of valued Foundation volunteer Jerry Goldstein, for organizing the event.
- Silver Docs Film Festival: On June 16, 2007 the film "A Walk to Beautiful" made its East Coast premiere at the Silver Docs film festival in Silver Springs, Maryland. As word has spread about the film's masterful quality, the screening sold out weeks in advance.
- Fistula Foundation tops Charity Navigator rating for nonprofit "Expanding in a Hurry": The Foundation is delighted to have recently been designated the Charity Navigator's top charity in the category of "Charities Expanding in a Hurry". In fall of 2006 Charity Navigator, one of the largest charity "watchdog" groups, gave the Fistula Foundation its coveted 4-Star rating. This is the highest rating given and is granted to fewer than 25% of charities.
- WOMEN DELIVER conference: This October 18-20 in London, experts, activists and leaders from around the world will gather for a landmark global conference to help create the political will to save the lives and improve the health of women, mothers and newborn babies around the world. To learn more, go to www.woemendeliver.org or call the Foundation.
Kate Grant (Fistula Foundation, E.D.) and Elizabeth Victoreen, University of California, DC
A Walk to Beautiful wins Audience Award at San Francisco International Film Festival
The documentary "A Walk to Beautiful" premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 5th, and had two additional screenings at the Festival the following week. Out of nearly 200 films shown at the Festival - in its 50th anniversary year - "A Walk to Beautiful" won the Audience Award. In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle, selected the film to be featured at a special panel discussion, one of only a handful of films selected by the paper.
San Francisco Chronicle Panel following movie showing from l. to r. Steve Winn (SF Chronicle); Mary Olive Smith, Steve Engel, Amy Bucher (Engel Entertainment); Steve Arrowsmith (WWF); Kate Grant (Fistula Foundation
"Maternal Mortality is the health indicator with the widest gap between the developed and developing world."
— The Lancet, September 2006
Formation of "International Society of Fistula Surgeons"
International Fistula Surgeons Meeting
In April, Hospital Senior Staff, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, CEO Mark Bennett, and Medical Director Dr. Mulu Muleta welcomed fistula surgeons from around the world to a meeting at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. The purpose of the meeting was to share lessons learned and surgical practices, with the goal of forming a society of surgeons dedicated to improving, enhancing and helping standardize best practices for fistula repair and treatment.
As a result of the meeting, the surgeons attending decided to form an organization of fistula surgeons called the "International Society of Obstetric Fistula Surgeons". The aim of the society is to share learning, train gynecologists and surgeons in fistula treatment and repair in developing countries around the world.
Stay tuned this fall for more information about this new group.Foundation funds effort to develop International Training Standards
The Foundation Board approved a grant to fund the engagement of JHPIEGO, an affiliate of the prestigious Johns Hopkins Medical School, exclusively dedicated to training and the art of knowledge transfer in developing countries around the world. Dr. Jeff Smith, who was a key leader in developing the pioneering program to train midwives in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban, visited the Fistula Hospital this spring. Dr. Smith and his team are helping the Fistula Hospital develop a training package suitable for obstetric fistula care and management. This training program will help the Fistula Hospital leverage its existing globally recognized expertise in training fistula surgeons and ensure that surgeons who come to the Hospital for training will receive the best training possible. The training package that JHPIEGO is developing will help the talented surgeons at the Fistula Hospital be even better teachers to the many doctors and nurses from other countries that come to be trained.
A woman dies of pregnancy-related complications every minute — meaning more than 500,000 women each year worldwide — and most of these deaths are preventable
— United Nations
Hospital begins Midwifery Training to Help Prevent Fistula
Many supporters of the Hospital ask how they can help prevent fistula. This is an issue near and dear to Dr. Hamlin's heart, from the early days of the Hospital. Indeed, she and her late husband Reginald originally came to Ethiopia to start a Midwifery program and Dr. Hamlin is now committed to starting such a program in conjunction with the Hospital. Her goal, and that of midwives Annette Bennett and Ruth Kennedy, is to help place midwives in villages near the five mini-hospitals to help women in labor, thus preventing fistula and other childbirth injuries. This is an exciting step forward.
The Hospital has started the building of classrooms, skill laboratory and refurbishment of dormitories for students, also a canteen and common room.
The goal is to open the college for BSc level midwives in the fall of this year. The initial intake will be about fifteen and then twenty each year afterwards. The clinical and classroom tutors have been employed and a visiting Professor, Dr. Ann Thomson from Manchester UK, has helped the team to develop an up to date curriculum. Stay tuned for more information as this exciting new program progresses. Special thanks go to both Johnson & Johnson and the Caris Foundation for their critical support of the midwife training.
Our Mission:
The Fistula Foundation is dedicated to the treatment and prevention of obstetric fistula, the most devastating aftermath of prolonged, obstructed labor, through the support of the programs of the Hamlin Fistula Hospitals in Ethiopia.
Update from Desta Mender — Joy Village
Ato Ephrem,
Manager of Desta Mender
Desta Mender, which means Joy Village in English, is where patients with long term needs are housed. The facility has a new manager, Ato Ephrem, who is helping bring new programs to the village.
One of the goals of Desta Mender is to provide long term residents with new skills to help them generate income from micro-businesses. Some of the women are learning to be seamstresses, while others are learning agricultural skills, working in the vegetable gardens and in the dairy. Other women are being taught catering and cooking skills which they are able to practice on the visitors to Desta Mender and on other patients.
One of the most exciting projects currently underway at Desta Mender is the growing and drying of leaves from a plant called Artemisia. You may have heard of it, as it is an herbal medicine that has been demonstrated to be effective in treating malaria. The women take the dried leaves and then package them for sale at supermarkets and other outlets. They have a similar business with sun-dried tomatoes. As you might imagine, the ability to produce products that have utility and can earn money help restore the patients' sense of dignity and self-worth.
Desta Mender — Joy Village
FLORIDA: REGISTRATION #:Ch17941- A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION FOR THE FISTULA FOUNDATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE (800-435-7352) WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION BY THE STATE. VIRGINIA: PLEASE NOTE: A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION FOR THE FISTULA FOUNDATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE OFFICE OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS, COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, BY CALLING: 804-786-1402.