"I am reclaiming my health, my dignity, and my life": Women healing from obstetric fistula in Yemen [EN/AR]

Country: Yemen Source: United Nations Population Fund Please refer to the attached file. ADEN, Yemen - "I lived in silence, hiding my pain from others, enduring my own gaze before enduring theirs," recalls Safiy, 28 years from Bajil District in Al Hudaydah Governorate. For five years, Safiy carried a pain she could neither understand nor explain. After severe complications during childbirth at a hospital in Bajil, she began experiencing faecal leakage—a condition that would force her to withdraw from from daily life. Amina, 20 years, from Aden Governorate too, faced her own silent battle. Married at fifteen and pregnant nine months later, she had no access to antenatal care in her remote village. When labour came, it lasted three agonizing days with only a traditional birth attendant by her side. By the time she reached a hospital, her baby had died. An emergency cesarean section saved her life, but left her with an obstetric fistula—a devastating childbirth injury that would isolate her for a year and a half. Safiy and Amina's stories reflect a harsh reality facing thousands of women across Yemen. Global estimates reveal that Yemen has the highest prevalence of obstetric fistula in the Arab States region—113 cases per 100,000 women as of 2020, compared to 86 per 100,000 across Arab States and 36 per 100,000 in Asia and the Pacific. Obstetric fistula—a hole between the birth canal and bladder or rectum caused by prolonged, obstructed labour without timely medical intervention —is both preventable and treatable. Yet in Yemen, a perfect storm of factors has made it a persistent crisis: early marriage and adolescent pregnancy, critically low rates of skilled birth attendance, and a healthcare system devastated by over a decade of conflict. When Systems Collapse, Women Pay the...

Original source: Relief Web