Fistula Hospital Ethiopia
The Australian gynaecologists Reginald and Catherine Hamlin came to Ethiopia in1959 to work at the Princess Tsehai Memorial Hospital and set up a midwives’ college. They became increasingly confronted with the suffering of women with obstetric trauma. At first, they operated on these women in the public hospital. The lack of space and the women’s inability to pay created conflicts, so that the Hamlins founded the Addis Abeba Fistula Hospital in 1974 exclusively for the treatment of women with obstetric fistula. Since then, more than a thousand women a year receive surgery for their bladder and/or recto-vaginal fistula. In addition, doctors from Ethiopia as well as from abroad are trained; the hospital also carries out information campaigns about fistula. The Hamlin Fistula Hospital, as the hospital is now known, has set up five outreach clinics in five Ethiopian regions as well as a midwifery college.
Further information can be found on the website of the Hamlin Fistula Hospital