I read this this morning...and was sickened by it. Please write to your
congressperson, and demand that we not cut funding to maternal child needs
in this world. To contact your U. S. Senators, go to:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Kathleen
Kathleen Bruce RN IBCLC
Independent consultant:
Lactation Resources of Vermont, Medela, Inc. Listowner Lactnet listserv
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Archives: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/lactnet.html
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 25, 2007
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
A Fight to Save Mothers
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof.
President Bushıs budget request this month proposes that the U.S. cut
spending on global maternal and child health programs to $346 million, or
just $1.15 per person in the U.S.
To understand what the cuts mean, meet Simeesh Segaye.
Ms. Simeesh, a warm 21-year-old Ethiopian peasant with a radiant smile,
married at 19 and quickly became pregnant. After she had endured two days of
obstructed labor, her neighbors carried her to a road and packed her into a
bus, but it took another two days to get to the nearest hospital.
By then the baby was dead. And Ms. Simeesh awakened to another horror: She
began leaking urine and feces from her vagina, a result of a childbirth
injury called obstetric fistula.
Ms. Simeeshıs family paid $10 for a public bus to take her to a hospital
that could repair her fistula. But the other passengers took one whiff of
her and complained vociferously that they shouldnıt have to share the
vehicle with someone who stinks. The bus driver ordered her off.
Mortified, Ms. Simeesh was crushed again when her husband left her. Her
parents built a separate hut for her because of her smell, but they nursed
her and brought her food and water.
In that hut, she stayed alone, ashamed, helpless, bewildered. She barely
ate, because the more she ate or drank, the more wastes trickled down her
legs.
³I just curled up,² she said. ³For two years.²
Ms. Simeesh was, in a sense, lucky. She wasnıt one of the 530,000 women who
die each year in pregnancy and childbirth a number that hasnıt declined in
30 years. Here in Ethiopia, a woman has one chance in 14 of dying in
childbirth at some point in her life.
For every woman who dies in childbirth worldwide, another 20 are injured.
But because the victims are born with three strikes against them they are
poor, rural and female they are invisible and voiceless, receiving almost
no help either from poor countries or from the developed world.
So Ms. Simeesh huddled in a fetal position on the floor of her hut for two
years, thinking about killing herself. Finally, last month, Ms. Simeeshıs
parents sold all their farm animals and paid a driver to take her to the
hospital in a vehicle with no other passengers present to complain.
So now Ms. Simeesh is lying in a bed here in the Addis Ababa Fistula
Hospital (www.fistulafoundation.org). The hospital is run by an Australian
gynecologist, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, whom Iıve written about before. Dr.
Hamlin is the Mother Teresa of our age.
The doctors here will try to repair the fistula, but first they must
strengthen Ms. Simeesh, who is skeletal. Her legs have withered and are
permanently bent into a fetal position, so that she canıt straighten them or
move them.
In the U.S., neither Democrats nor Republicans have ever shown great
interest in maternal health. But itıs an issue that deserves far more
support, partly because we know exactly what to do to bring down maternal
mortality and morbidity: Sri Lanka and Honduras have both shown how poor
countries can drastically cut rates of death and injury.
And in the breakaway Somaliland region of Somalia, an extraordinary woman
named Edna Adan Ismail runs her own obstetric hospital and trains midwives,
underscoring how womenıs lives can be saved even in the most difficult
environments. Ms. Edna struggles one moment to deliver a breech baby, and
the next to round up surgical masks. She is helped by a group of Americans,
Friends of Edna Hospital (www.ednahospital.netfirms.com), who raise funds
and scavenge supplies. (To see Ms. Edna, Ms. Simeesh and others in this
column, please visit the video I have posted on my blog at
www.nytimes.com/ontheground.)
Dr. Hamlin and Ms. Edna deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for showing the world
how to turn the tide of maternal mortality and morbidity, and for offering
comfort to some of the most forlorn people in the world. At a time when
weıre proposing further cuts in our negligible budget for maternal and child
health, I was deeply moved by the sight of Ruth Kennedy, a British midwife
at the fistula hospital, comforting Ms. Simeesh and bringing a lovely smile
to her lips.
³They think theyıve been cursed by God,² Ms. Kennedy explained. ³And we tell
them that they havenıt been cursed by God and that theyıre beautiful and
that the only reason that they got a fistula is because we failed them as
health professionals.²
You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristofıs blog,
www.nytimes.com/ontheground.
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