Jamila

Please help keep hope alive for mothers, like Jamila in Nigeria, living with the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula!

“Jesus said to her, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment. – Matthew 9:22

We wish to express our heartfelt thanks for your generous support of the ministry of cbm. Thank you for caring for adults and children with disabilities in the world’s poorest places. Your generosity is truly transforming lives.

We’d like to tell you about how you can continue this vital ministry by helping mothers held captive by the humiliation of uncontrollably leaking bodily waste caused by obstetric fistula.

Please will you prayerfully consider sending a gift of hope to help free heartbroken mothers, like Jamila, from the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula.

Few people in New Zealand know how debilitating living with obstetric fistula is: how a mother can go for years, decades, even a lifetime – constantly cleaning and wrapping herself, separating herself from society, because she cannot stop her body from leaking its waste.

Watch the video as Jamila describes what happened to her, and you can see the light in her husband’s eyes go out as he remembers being completely powerless to help his precious wife.

Someone did help her though – someone like you!

Thanks to wonderful support like yours, Jamila received a gift greater than she could ask or imagine. She received the skillful surgical support and loving aftercare that gave her freedom from obstetric fistula!

Please extend this blessing to more mothers like Jamila.

Please prayerfully consider what your gift will be to help keep hope alive for mothers, like Jamila in Nigeria, living with the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula.

By the end of next year, more than one hundred thousand mothers will develop an obstetric fistula due to traumatic childbirth. Year by year that builds up. Right now, it is estimated there are approximately two million mothers globally trying to cope with the endless leaking and smell of obstetric fistula.

Two million?!? Why then is obstetric fistula virtually unknown in New Zealand apart from caring cbm supporters like you? It is because obstetric fistula only really affects mothers’ lives in places of extreme poverty, where there are virtually no resources for maternal healthcare.

One such place is Nigeria. In fact, Nigeria is one of the ten most dangerous places for a mother to give birth. Of the more than one hundred thousand cases of obstetric fistula next year, forty thousand will occur in Nigeria.

Jamila did at least have a hospital to go to for the birth of her second baby. However, when she experienced a third-degree tear in childbirth, she only received basic surface stitches. No-one realised how deeply the tear had wounded her.

Bodily waste from an obstetric fistula started leaking through her birth canal. She was deeply shocked and utterly mortified.

This is obstetric fistula and throughout history it has always existed as a real risk in childbirth – but it is often hidden.

Obstetric fistula is as taboo as human suffering can be. I am full of admiration and respect for people like you, who are prepared to put taboos aside and support this life-restoring fistula ministry.

Imagine Jamila’s future without the support of generous people like you. She would live trapped in her room, unable to go to work, to the market or to church, because it would be impossible to hide her overpowering smell. Without surgery the leaking would never stop.

Jamila and her husband were determined to avoid such a miserable fate – but what power did they have? “I went to the hospital to lay a complaint,” Jamila recalls, “and they said a surgery must be done in order to address the leakage.”

The impossible problem was this: the hospital did not have the specialist skills and training for fistula repair. Few hospitals do. “We asked them for a way out.” Sadly, they could not give one.

Jamila and her husband left the hospital, with little hope. They had no idea where to find the surgical support Jamila needed and could not afford it even if they did. Jamila fell into despair and depression. Because she could not control her waste, she did everything she could to reduce it. “I stopped eating. I became very thin.”

You can understand why a woman with obstetric fistula would starve herself or become dangerously dehydrated. The very food and drink she consumes would only cause her more humiliation.

It is a terrible situation for a mother to be in, especially if she is trying to keep up her nourishment to feed her baby.

“I kept on asking my husband. What are we going to do about this?” She couldn’t bear it and her husband felt completely powerless to help.

Your support is a lifeline to mothers like Jamila and the lifeline begins by spreading the good news of hope. Your gift helps to create publicity and awareness about this obstetric ministry in communities like Jamila’s.

Her husband expresses this well:

“I never knew that there were so many people affected by this problem.”

Like almost everyone, everywhere, he had never heard of obstetric fistula. Yet in communities like Jamila’s, almost everyone knows a family affected by it – they just don’t realise it. It is never discussed. Obstetric fistula is too taboo!

That is why the first part of obstetric fistula ministry is getting the word out that it exists and it can be healed. Thanks to support like yours, Jamila and her husband discovered the obstetric fistula ministry you support in Nigeria.

Please will you help keep hope alive for more mothers living with the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula.

Thanks to people like you, Jamila and her husband found out the good news: “There is an organisation,” Jamila beams, “that comes and works hand-in-hand with Kwali General Hospital to support people with such cases.” That ministry is SFHF – Sustainable Family Healthcare Foundation. They are one of a few obstetric fistula care ministries in the most remote parts of Nigeria. Their wonderful work is funded by generous cbm supporters like you through the Comprehensive and Inclusive Women’s Health Project in Nigeria.

The scope of this ministry spans all the way from: publicity and awareness; training of healthcare staff around the prevention of obstetric fistula; specialised surgery and care; through to livelihood and social programmes to restore rejected and abandoned mothers back to their standing in their family and community.

SFHF is the ministry that cared for Jamila. “They were such a blessing and the surgery was successfully done,” she says, beaming with a smile so broad and joyful. “I’m out of that terrible experience!”

Likewise, her husband’s eyes light up as he too delights in the great gift you have given to his precious wife. Her husband says, “I was touched by what was happening there. We are grateful and we pray that Almighty God will keep on strengthening this organisation to do more and more, so that the lives of others will be touched.”

We are grateful to God too – especially for people like you. Without you, there can be no cbm, no expert help for mothers suffering this humiliating disability. It is a rare person who even knows about obstetric fistula in our time. Thank you for being willing to bring hope and joy back to the hearts of mothers, like Jamila.

But we are also deeply concerned that right now  there are so many other mothers, like Jamila, who are needing to be free from a lifetime of smell and isolation, and to have their dignity restored.

Your gift will help find mothers hidden in shame and isolation living with obstetric fistula. It will help support life-restoring obstetric fistula surgery, after care medication and livelihood programmes to help mothers live independently. And it can help train healthcare staff around the prevention of obstetric fistula.

Jamila is doing what she can to join you in supporting mothers living with obstetric fistula. She has been meeting with some who dared not dream that surgery really could deliver them from their endless distress. “I visited them. I encouraged them and assured them that since mine was successful, theirs will also be successful.”

Mothers living with obstetric fistula will be so grateful to you, as Jamila and her husband are. With her wide smile Jamila exclaims, “We thank cbm New Zealand!” Her husband sighs with earnest relief and offers you a heartfelt benediction in Hausa, his heart language: “May God bless you all.”

Indeed! Thank you for being willing to help keep hope alive for mothers, like Jamila in Nigeria, living with the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula!

Please will you help heal more mothers, like Jamila, and free them from obstetric fistula so they can live independently again.

Thank you for being willing to give grieving mothers like Jamila freedom from obstetric fistula and new hope. Blessings to you and your loved ones.