Advocates Rally World Support to End Fistula

UNITED NATIONS, Geneva — Fistula survivor, Sarah Omega Kidangasi, and singer, actress and Virgin Unite ambassador, Natalie Imbruglia, today addressed the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations to call attention to maternal health and obstetric fistula, a devastating injury of childbearing that leaves women with agonizing pain, chronic incontinence and – in most cases – a stillborn baby.

The 400 attending ministers of health, ministers of foreign affairs and ambassadors at the ECOSOC High-Level Segment were confronted with the grim facts that every minute a woman dies needlessly in pregnancy or childbirth, and for every woman who dies, 20-30 women suffer a serious birth injury, of which one of the more devastating is obstetric fistula.

“Obstetric fistula was eliminated here in Europe and the United States more than 100 years ago,” said Ms. Imbruglia, the Virgin Unite ambassador and spokesperson for the Campaign to End Fistula, a global effort led by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. “It’s unacceptable that women and girls in developing countries are still suffering from this entirely preventable and treatable condition.”

ECOSOC this year focuses on Global Public Health, and the participants at the High-Level segment also listened to Ms. Kidangasi, a Kenyan woman who has personally experienced living with fistula.

“Night and day for 12 years, my life was continually put on the verge. With uncontrolled leaking of urine, foul smell, stigma, isolation, pain and rejection, it was like dying every day,” said 33-year-old Sarah, who developed fistula after prolonged obstructed labour that left her baby dead.

Today, two years after successful treatment, she is a strong maternal health advocate in local communities and at international meetings. “I speak with conviction, passion and emotion, on maternal health because every woman has a right to live, laugh and live again,” she said.

Ms. Imbruglia has for five years lent her voice and energy to ending fistula and together with Virgin Unite has raised over 875,000 euros for the campaign. She addressed the ECOSOC session on Partnership in Health. “The partnership between Virgin Unite, UNFPA and the Campaign to End Fistula is helping ensure that fistula is no longer something hidden, forgotten and unspoken. And it is working - otherwise I would not be standing at the ECOSOC today,” she said and called on the world to join her and make motherhood safe and fistula a thing of the past.

It is estimated that more than 2 million women are living with fistula in developing countries; an additional 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occur each year. Every year, more than half a million women die in childbirth. The ECOSOC meeting 2009 will discuss the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goal where the least has been achieved to date is the one on maternal health, MDG 5, which aims to improve maternal health and reduce maternal death. MDG 5 is often called the heart of the MDGs because if it fails, the others will, too.

For more on fistula, visit www.endfistula.org.

Contact Information:

Geneva:

Leyla Alyanak
+41 796 876 056
alyanak@unfpa.org

New York:

Katja Iversen
+1 212 297 5016
iversen@unfpa.org