In a corrugated iron shack in the outskirts of the village, they find a young woman. Hands and feet bound together, hips contracted, muscles wasted. A miasma of stale, black air swathes her rigid skeleton. Her eyes betray a solitary tear as she agonisingly recollects a labour through which she saw the sun rise and set seven times. The nauseating stench of the faeces and urine that bathes her sheets makes her flinch. "If I stay still it will all dry up", she thinks. If only the world were so kind. Such is the image conjured up by a recent international film-based campaign that strives to end the plight of more than 2 million women worldwide with obstetric fistula. For a woman living in the west, fistula is something that has been consigned to the past. The possibility that, during labour, her baby's head could bore a hole through her own vagina and bladder so that she would be left perpetually leaking urine or faeces is unimaginable. But for many women in developing countries obstetric fistula is a reality: the result of prolonged labour without medicalintervention during which the baby is usually stillborn. Albeit virtually eradicated inthe western world during the 18th century, this silent epidemic marginalises women throughout Africa, Asia, and the Arab region, stripping them of their inherent entitlement to safe motherhood.
展开▼
