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Project Highlights
Recent Activities
- In Sierra Leone, A Multimedia Campaign and a Fistula Hotline
- Family Planning-Integrated Fistula Care Services
- Fistula Services Provided to 84 Women in Hoima, Uganda
- Fistula Care Guinea to Start Program for Women Permanently Disabled by Fistula
- Midwives from Sierra Leone Attend Conference in Durban
- Community Transformation in Nigeria
- National Fistula Day in Guinea
- To read more about earlier activities, please click here.
- To read past issues of our newsletter, please click here.
Fistula Repair
Between 2005 and June 2011, 22,507 fistula repair surgeries were supported with funding from USAID. Fistula Care currently works with partners in ten countries in a total of 78 facilities. Of these, 34 hospitals provide fistula repair surgery.
Support for Training
Between 2005 and September 2010 the Fistula Care Project trained over 17,000 people in areas related to fistula prevention, fistula repair and advocacy for fistula care. Many of these people were community volunteers who learned about fistula, its prevention, and the availability of services. Fistula Care country programs have provided training for 279 surgeons in fistula repair. Over 950 nurses and other medical staff have received training in pre and post-operative care and fistula counseling, and over 800 health care workers have been trained in obstetric care. Please see here for detailed training information by country and here for fistula training resources.
Fistula Care Research
Fistula Care is carrying out research to help to answer some of the most pressing clinical research questions in the field of obstetric and traumatic fistula. For more information about the studies underway, please visit the research page.
Developing Resources
Fistula Care is introducing new tools, including a training strategy, supervision and monitoring tools for training and for service delivery, a knowledge assessment tool for trainees, data collection forms, and an online database for Fistula Care colleagues around the world. The project is now working to finalize an obstetric fistula counseling curriculum, a nursing curriculum, and a module on counseling women who have experienced traumatic gynecologic fistula (a companion to the obstetric fistula counseling curriculum).
Preventing Fistula
Fistula Care focuses on four interventions to prevent new cases of fistula from occurring. These include family planning, the correct use of the partograph, immediate catheterization to prevent or treat small fistulas among women who experience obstructed labor, and strengthening cesarean section service delivery.
