A virginal eight year old taken away
Joined in matrimony, an aged swain
Damaged from then on, mind and body sway
The horrors of neglected labor pain
Days of squatting and pushing kill fetus
Tear vagina, bladder, rectum the same
Urine, feces and blood, the detritus
Mixed together, enhances the shame
Family abandon fistula girl
Who has no hope, might as well die too
But the lady down under came to unfurl
Therapies to heal, return to life anew
African revolutions are not rare
Order of Companion gave lasting care
Backstory
Dr. Catherine Hamlin, Australian born and educated obstetrician died, at the age of 96, in her adopted home Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a few weeks before I write this. In her early thirties, with husband Reg and six-year old son, she moved to Ethiopia to work as a hospital doctor and gynecologist. She stayed there for 60 years, still operating when she was 92, saving the futures and indeed lives of tens of thousands of Ethiopian girls who had been injured in, and then rejected by, their communities through the tragedy of the obstetric fistula. This is a life-long story, not the single major event that marks most historical moments in medicine, and I would not be aware of it were it not for a very thought-provoking obituary in the Economist and the record of the philanthropy shown to her cause by Oprah Winfrey.
Arriving in Addis Ababa, Dr. Hamlin was faced with a centuries-old tradition in Ethiopia, where girls were married at the age of eight or nine, becoming pregnant immediately after the start of ovulation, giving birth by themselves with only the attendance of a ‘witch doctor’, which often resulted in massive bladder, rectum and vaginal damage; multiple incontinences resulted in them being shunned by the whole community. For those who were Christians, their church, the Ethiopian Orthodox, encouraged this practice. Dr. Hamlin used experimental surgical techniques of fat-pad grafting, which were so successful they became standard of care. She revolutionized midwifery in the country, and indeed in many parts of the developing world, now being supported by Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia. She was recognized globally for her achievements, being twice recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize, and received the distinction of the AC, the rare Companion of the Order of Australia from her natural home.
