Mamitu Gashe is former fistula sufferer who has dedicated her life after surgery to the fellow patients at the hospital.
Mamitu said that she got married when she was 14 and got pregnant two years later, when she was 16 her husband was 25. The marriage was arranged by their parents.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. After a few elders were sent to our house we ended getting married.” She said
Mamitu said that her husband was a very kind man, he was a gentle man. He did whatever he could to make her happy; he provided her with anything that he could.
“I was very happy when I got pregnant I assume that we would have a family and then we would be happy after that. So I was excited. I didn’t for see any problem occurring. The problem started when I went into labor. Everyone assumed that it was persuading just normally.” Mamitu said.
At age 16, she experienced an obstructed labor which lasted for four days. At the end of this ordeal, her baby was stillborn and she was left with an obstetric fistula. After weeks of suffering with intense pain and uncontrollable incontinence caused by the injury, she embarked on the long journey to the capital, in hope of a cure.
She arrived at the Princess Tsehai Memorial Hospital, where she met Dr Catherine and Reg Hamlin. They welcomed her with love and compassion and told her that she would be cured.
“As soon
as they said that, I felt hopeful. I felt so happy, and I stayed there until I
felt stronger”, Mamitu said.
After her surgery, Mamitu began helping out around the hospital, firstly by making the beds of her fellow patients. She mirrored the compassion that she received from Catherine and Reg, expressing that she wanted to help the women around her.
Noticing her hard work and willingness to learn new skills, Reginald soon asked Mamitu if she would like to observe how fistula repair surgeries were performed. From here, she began assisting Regionald in fistula surgeries, sewing up wounds or making incisions. She began training in fistula repair surgeries under Catherine and Reginald and went on to become an internationally renowned fistula surgeon. In 1989, she won the Gold Medal for surgery from the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Her personal experience of fistula gives Mamitu a profound sense of understanding and compassion for the patients at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital:
“I know exactly what they are going through; I have been through that pain. It gives them a tremendous sense of ease when I tell them I was once just like them, so they know they can be cured” ,Mamitu said.
Now aged 72, Mamitu still lives on the hospital grounds and spends most of her days with Catherine, who she calls ‘Emaye’, Amharic for Mother.
“I have known Dr Catherine Hamlin since I was a little girl, so she’s just like a mother to me.” She added
Like Reginald and Catherine, Mamitu has devoted her life to the women of Ethiopia. Once a fistula patient herself, she has spent decades working alongside Catherine, Reginald and the Hamlin team to cure over 60,000 women. Mamitu shares Catherine’s dream to eradicate fistula forever.
Maternal death and disability in Ethiopia, particularly in rural areas, is among the highest in Africa. A sizable proportion of the women suffer from a condition referred to as Obstetric Fistula. In 1959 the husband and wife team of Drs, Reginald and Catherine Hamlin came to Ethiopia initially with a three- year period with the aim of addressing the shortage of maternal health training and services. Based at the princess Tsehay Memorial Hospital, they became pioneers in performing surgery for women suffering from Obstetric Fistula. Later, the need for such services became so overwhelming that in 1974 they established the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to care for women with childbirth injuries.
Obstetric Fistula refers to an injury resulting from long unrelieved obstructed labor. When a baby is too
big or poorly oriented, it may not pass through the pelvis of the mother and may result in obstructed labor. The constant pressure of the unborn baby’s head against the mother’s bony pelvis in unrelieved, prolonged and obstructed labor over many hours or days leads to the death of tissue and an abnormal opening between the birth passage and bladder, and/ or rectum. Labor proceeds, and if the mother survives, usually results in stillbirth.
Following the traumatic experience, the women become incontinent of urine or faeces and can be cured by surgery. A constant trickle of body waste products make women offensive to those around them and unwanted. Eventually, they become a social outcast in their own community.
The recent study of Ministry of Health that shows that there are about 39 thousand women who are facing fistula and need treatment in Ethiopia. These women are left without treatment because of the fact that lack of awareness about the function of the hospital.
Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia works to mend this trauma, healing these women through surgery, rehabilitation and counseling, so they can be whole again.
Though Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia has a capacity to cure 4000 new case per year, but it operates below its capacity for low level of awareness among the society, Aschalew Tadesse communication Officer at Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia Hospital said.
Catherine has devoted her life to uplifting the marginalized women of Ethiopia, firm in her belief that every woman has the right to live her life with dignity. Once believing that they were incurable, women with fistula now have a source of hope in Catherine and her team at Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia. Catherine’s dream is to eradicate fistula in Ethiopia by 2030. So that every woman can be free from these atrocious internal injuries.
“My dream is to eradicate obstetric fistula. I won’t do this in my lifetime, but you can in yours,” Dr Catherine Hamlin said.
These women have suffered more than any woman should be called upon to endure. To meet this, only one is to be profoundly moved and calls forth the utmost compassion that the human heart is capable of feeling”, Dr Catherine Hamlin.
Currently many women who are victim of fistula are getting treatment, but the women who receive this life-changing treatment are often too poor to pay. Their treatment is offered free, thanks to a movement of people who donate in order to realize the dream of eradicating obstetric fistula.
The Ethiopian Herald June 6, 2019
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
