| Congressional Briefing: Key Progress Addressing Obstetric Fistula |
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How the response to this childbirth injury is transforming the lives of millions of women and girls in the world.
Media Advisory WHAT: A congressional briefing, “Ending Fistula Forever,” organized by Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Campaign to End Fistula partners (UNFPA, EngenderHealth, Fistula Foundation, Human Rights Watch and International Women’s Health Coalition), will highlight strategic approaches to the fight against obstetric fistula —a critical reproductive health and human rights issue affecting more than 2 million women in the world. Speakers at the briefing will share the experience of women and girls living with the condition and discuss the impact of U.S. support for programs that prevent and treat fistula globally.Obstetric fistula is both a preventable and treatable childbirth injury that leaves women with urinary and/or fecal incontinence. It results from prolonged, obstructed labor without timely medical intervention, and largely afflicts poor, rural and illiterate women in developing countries.
Fistula makes women outcasts in their own
families and communities. The debilitating effects of fistula have
forced hundreds of thousands of women and girls to suffer the
consequences of this condition in solitude and shame. Fistula is perhaps
one of the most tragic and telling examples of inequitable access to
maternal health care around the world. Partners from the international community, civil society and the U.S. Government are working together on a global campaign to prevent and treat fistula, with the goal of making the condition as rare in the developing world as it is in the United States.
WHEN:
Tuesday, May 24, 10:00 - 11:30 am WHERE: 121 Cannon House Office Building, Capitol Hill, Washington D.C.
WHO: |
