Our vision and history

It all began in 1999, when a heavily pregnant young woman in north-east Chad arrived at the district hospital in Adré. After days of labour, during which the unborn child had already died, the teenager urgently needed medical intervention. Martin and Claudia Leimgruber, a Swiss couple who had spent several years working at the hospital as a district doctor and midwife respectively, barely managed to save the young woman’s life.
 

The prolonged labour had left the young woman with severe internal injuries known as a fistula. It was the first time the couple had encountered an obstetric fistula, which can have devastating consequences – physically, socially and psychologically – for those affected.  Many more such cases were to follow.

Martin and Claudia Leimgruber decided to take up the cause to offer healing for fistula survivors. In 2002, they organised two surgery camps for 90 women, working with an experienced surgical team who travelled to Chad from the renowned Addis Ababa Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia.

Back in Switzerland, Martin and Claudia Leimgruber founded Women’s Hope International in December 2003 together with friends, with the mission of providing long-term support to fistula survivors.

Today, more than twenty years later, our work is still sadly needed. While maternal mortality is declining worldwide, a woman still dies every two minutes somewhere in the world from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. This shows that local and international efforts are making a difference, yet the toll remains devastating. Every woman who dies leaves a void in the lives of those she leaves behind.

The quote of our founding member makes it clear:  to prevent deaths occurring during birth, we need to tackle the root causes. Since its founding, our organisation has grown steadily and, thanks to broad support from the public sector, foundations and private donors, is now able to take a comprehensive approach to strengthen the health and rights of girls and women.