Many other women are left with major injuries such as obstetric fistulas. This occurs when the labour gets stuck, as the baby is too big or the mother is too small to deliver normally. This complication is highly preventable and has now been eradicated in the developed world, where most women have access to medical intervention during labour.

But with most women in Sub-Saharan Africa delivering at home, hospitals can often be too far away or too expensive when a woman is giving birth, giving rise to obstetric fistulae.

A woman could be in labour for 3-7 days, which can result in the delivery of a deceased child and significant damage to her birth canal, bladder and bowels. This damage can then lead to uncontrollable leaking from her bladder and bowels. Women who go through this are ashamed, divorced, ostracized, and often suicidal. 

No woman should suffer this horrendous childbirth injury and humiliation.

Anglican Aid, together with the Barbara May Foundation, is helping to treat women with this condition across Africa and to prevent obstetric fistula. This is done through building and operating hospitals where women can come in safety to deliver free of charge. The organisation trains Christian midwives, doctors, fistula surgeons, and runs education programs about safe motherhood in remote villages. 

Each BMF Hospital enables up to 15,000 women to deliver safely for free across Ethiopia and Tanzania, and treats hundreds of women suffering with obstetric fistula.  Together we can provide clinical skills for over 100 midwives, and train surgeons in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania. 

BMF is a Christian foundation motivated by the love and compassion that God the Father has for the world and endeavours to serve as Christ serves. Please join Anglican Aid as together we strive to eradicate unsafe births in Africa.

Anglican Aid has been supporting fistula work in Africa since 1972.