YOUNG FISTULA ADVOCATES GO TO SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES

“It is a dream come true,” remarked Ms. Mariam Pewu, 18, her eyes sparkling with joy as she saw the first team of the Fistula Girls Club leave St. Matthew Lutheran High School in Monrovia’s eastern district of Paynesville to begin an awareness campaign in Gobachop Market, a nearby suburban community in the capital of Liberia.

They had just launched the club, which started as an idea among a few high school friends. The almost 300 students present at the launch ceremony on 26 March 2010 were a testimony of how far things can go with commitment and hope.

A team from the Girls Club led by Ms. Mariam Pewu (second on the right) shares information with a girl who have just come from the countryside to sell her farm produce. Photo: UNFPA Liberia.

Ms. Pewu and her colleagues are quite privileged. They receive an education, they have friends and they are even allowed to mingle within their communities — rare luxuries for some young women in Liberia. Still, they care about less fortunate girls their age who face isolation, abandonment, stigma and discrimination as a result of a terrible birthing injury — obstetric fistula.

Speaking during the launch ceremony, Ms. Pewu, the club’s acting coordinator, said she conceived the idea “to advocate on behalf of women living with fistula and to spread messages to fight the problem” after meeting a fistula patient in May 2009 at a local hospital in Monrovia.

“When I met that girl in a corridor of the John F. Kennedy hospital, and I saw urine leaking down her legs and the hopelessness on her face, I asked myself why she had to suffer that way,” she remembered.

Ms. Pewu revealed that her quest to know more about the condition led her to discover the Liberia Fistula Project. “I started sharing information with schoolmates and encouraged them to join me in establishing a fistula awareness club at my school,” she explained.

The group now brings together students from at least 10 high schools across the district and aims to carry out fistula awareness activities among students and communities. Their motto: Healthy Women, Healthy Nation.

Although it is challenging to estimate the prevalence of obstetric fistula in Liberia, available data on maternal mortality ratio and initial information gathered as part of a 2006 situation analysis point at fistula as a major problem in the country.

In recognition of the need to address the issue, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Liberian government launched the Liberia Fistula Project in 2007, with activities partially funded by Zonta International, a global organization to advance the status of women worldwide.

The results achieved since then are impressive, including the steady increase in the number of patients treated: from around 150 in 2007 to almost 200 in 2009, with an average success rate of 81 per cent.