Poor Little Girls
The most appalling thing that can happen to a little girl is rape and premature sexual activity.
This was brought home again last night when a documentary on the ABC in Australia highlighted the work of an Australian doctor, Catherine Hamlin. In c1958 she and husband Reginald Hamlin responded to an ad for doctors willing to serve in Africa. Reg died 15 years ago and since then Catherine has continued the work they started together in Addis Ababa, Ethiopias Capital.
They started a hospital to treat the thousands of your girls who, because of early pregnancies, suffer damage to their organs. The most prominent and worst of these is obstetric fistula. This is a hole in the birth canal linking to the bladder and/or rectum. It means the girls are constantly leaking urine or feces or both. The consequence is that they smell, are socially unacceptable, and are usually abandoned by husbands, families and friends.
Watching this program was painful as these poor little girls, some married at 8 or 9 years of age by fathers rushing to get rid of them, are then possibly pregnant before they have their first period. The body is immature and the size of the pelvis such that painful labors may ensue and last for days. One woman was in labor for around 10 days. The fetus usually dies from stress and the woman has severe damage to the organs around the birth canal. Constant pressure from labor gradually forces pieces of the birth canal to fall away leaving the hole(s).
Some women are so badly affected that they cannot be cured and one teenager on the show had to use a plug after 3 operations to repair the fistula failed. The bladder, in her case, was so badly damaged that only part of it was functional.
These women live for years in horrid conditions that most of us would not expect animals to endure. One woman told of how she sat all night on pieces of wood because she constantly wet the ground under her.
This is a tragedy that the western world rarely gets to see and if it wasn’t for the work of the 2 Dr Hamlins we probably would never know about it. Unfortunately Catherine is aging and may not continue for much longer but there are now doctors who can take over, if the funds and the will is there.
When they are cured the patients receive a new dress and scarf to see them on their way. But the shoes they arrived in are the same one that were constantly saturated by urine beforehand. Some wear only thongs.
These young women come from hundred of miles away to the hospital so not many actually make it. Then they have to wait their turn when they do arrive. There are only 30 patients a week treated but Dr Hamlin said there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of such cases throughout the country, and this is only what’s come to light in Ethiopia.
Surely we can help and education and support for young women may stop the procedure which lands them into this mess in the first place. How about it all you millionaires, billionaires and wealthy companies?