Campaign to End Fistula

Each year some 50,000-100,000 women sustain an obstetric fistula in the act of trying to bring forth new life. Fistula is a preventable and treatable condition, one that no woman should have to endure. Yet more than two million women remain untreated in developing countries. That is why UNFPA has launched a global Campaign to End Fistula.

Obstetric fistula is usually the result of obstructed labour coupled with a lack of appropriate medical intervention - typically a Caesarean section - to relieve it. For a variety of reasons, fistula disproportionately affects very young and very poor women. Addressing this isolating condition, especially within the context of making motherhood safer for all women, is at the very heart of UNFPA’s mandate to promote reproductive health.

UNFPA is, in fact, spearheading a campaign that includes a broad coalition of partners dedicated to ending fistula. Generous funding from the Government of Finland helped jump-start the campaign, which is now supported by many other donors.

The Fund is involved in a wide range of interventions to end fistula, including:

• Raising Awareness
  Through a global Campaign to End Fistula, UNFPA is educating individual men and women, communities, policy makers and health professionals about how it can be prevented and treated.



• Partnering
  UNFPA leads a coalition of organizations committed to the prevention and treatment of fistula, an isolating disability that results from unrelieved obstructed labour. This report, from the second meeting of the working group, documents the considerable progress that has been made in bringing fistula to wider attention, in collecting data about it, and in developing strategies to end fistula in the developing world, just as it has been virtually eliminated in industrialized countries.
  
  
• Assessing Critical Needs
  UNFPA partnered with EngenderHealth to conduct a ground-breaking study on the occurrence of fistula in nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa and on the capacity of hospitals to treat it. UNFPA is also working to map critical needs in several other countries.
  
  
• Making Childbirth Safer for All
  Preventing fistula is one part of UNFPA’s wider effort to ensure that all women have access to skilled attendance during childbirth and that those who develop complications have access to emergency obstetric care.
  
  
• Monitoring Progress
  For too long, efforts to reduce maternal mortality stalled, in part because the facts underlying the problem -- and the best strategies to address it -- were poorly understood. This report documents UNFPA's efforts to address maternal mortality using a strategic and practical evidence-based approach in a region where data has been scarce,and where too many women have died. Increasing access to emergency obstetric care is central to this approach.
  
  
• Providing Technical Assistance
  UNFPA is involved in many efforts to improve emergency obstetric care, from training doctors, nurses, and midwives to providing supplies and equipment and developing standards of care.

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