AMREF is proud of working with Africa’s poorest and most hard to reach communities to find innovative solutions to their health challenges. Our work in Turkana, northern Kenya, demonstrates our commitment to delivering healthcare to all, regardless of the obstacles. Turkana is one of Kenya’s poorest and most remote districts where 75% of the population live in extreme poverty. Most of the Turkana people are nomadic pastoralists, constantly on the move in groups in search of pasture and water for their precious livestock.
In Turkana many girls marry in their early teens and it is not uncommon for them to give birth to their first child before the age of fifteen, before their body is mature enough to cope with pregnancy and childbirth. Women in Turkana have very limited access to reproductive health services, including pre-natal and emergency obstetric care. This, along with a chronic shortage of trained health workers and limited education for girls, contributes to the likelihood of women experiencing complications during pregnancy and childbirth and very high rates of maternal and child mortality. For each woman who dies during childbirth, twenty more women suffer serious complications, including a condition called obstetric fistula.
Obstetric fistula is a devastating childbirth injury that occurs when a young woman has a difficult, obstructed labour that lasts several days; but is unable to access medical care. In 90% of cases the baby dies and the woman is left with extensive tissue damage to her birth canal that renders her incontinent.
The results are of fistula are life shattering. Women with fistula are perceived as unclean, and the stigma attached to the condition means many are neglected or abandoned by their husbands, families and friends, and are left isolated from their communities.
Nearly 100,000 new cases of fistula occur in Africa each year, while millions more women have been living with the condition for many years. Although fistula is devastating, it is both preventable and treatable. The scale of the problem, and the persistence of fistula is a signal that health systems are failing to meet the needs of women.
Stella lives in Turkana and shares her experience with us: “I went into labour at around 4pm. When the baby refused to come out, the traditional birth attendant said I should go to the hospital, but it was dark so I had to wait until the following day. Four men carried me on a bed all the way to the hospital, it took many hours and by the time we got there, I was unconscious. My mother was told that my uterus had ruptured. The baby was dead. When I woke up, I found myself lying in a pool of urine. The doctor told me that something had gone wrong during labour and I could only be treated at the hospital in the city. I did not know where I would get the money to go there. I went back to my mother’s home feeling very sad. I had no baby and now I had this new embarrassing problem. When my husband came to get me, my mother told me about this condition. He left, saying he was going to look for money to take me to hospital. I never saw him again. Later I heard that he had married another woman. Life has been very difficult these last seven years. I spend most of my time sitting on a pile of rags. I have always had painful sores on my thighs and buttocks. I have not been allowed to go to weddings or to church. Then one day last month, a teacher from a nearby school told me that doctors from AMREF were coming to treat women with problems like mine. I came here four days ago, and yesterday I had an operation to repair the fistula. I am very excited because when I go home I will be able to do all the things that I have not been able to do. I have been given my life back”.
In Turkana, AMREF has worked closely with the nomadic pastoralists to map their migratory routes and is building health centres along these routes, ensuring that women can access healthcare more easily. AMREF is also training volunteers from each nomadic group in basic child and maternal health care.
- AMREF is performing fistula repairs across Africa and training more surgeons to carry out fistula repair operations.
- AMREF supports communities with the resources and training they need to deliver better reproductive health services.
- AMREF is reducing maternal and child mortality and offering hope to women across Africa who are suffering from fistula, but we need your help to continue this vital work.
- With your support, AMREF can transform the lives of more women who live in poor African communities. You have the power to prevent the unnecessary death of women and babies in childbirth, to restore dignity to young women across Africa and enable them to live happy, healthy lives.
Please donate to AMREF today and help us transform the lives of more women like Stella.