Around the world, an estimated half a million women and girls live with obstetric fistula: a tear in the birth canal that leaves women leaking urine or feces and can result in significant medical and mental health issues.

Obstetric fistula is almost entirely preventable, but it continues to debilitate the world’s most marginalized, impoverished women and girls.

The toll of the injury is devastating. In addition to severe health complications, including frequent infections, survivors are often shunned by their communities and abandoned by their partners, unable to work or go to school, and driven deeper into social exclusion and poverty.

For as heartbreaking as this is, obstetric fistula needs far outweigh the services that exist to deliver care. Women and girls are counting on you to deliver emergency obstetric care and prevent the most morbid impacts of this injury.

Donate today to deliver the gift of lifesaving care to pregnant women and ensure every childbirth is safe. $375 can cover an entire obstetric fistula repair surgery.

​​Dr. Paul Musoba is one of just eight fistula surgeons in Zambia — where more than 33,000 women and girls have been affected by the birth injury.

“The trauma suffered by many of my clients during delivery is heartbreaking, as it goes beyond the physical. I focus throughout not only on healing their physical wounds, but also supporting their emotional and psychological healing,” Dr. Musoba told us.

But getting to expectant mothers living in remote areas, as well as those suffering from fistula in their communities, is one of the biggest challenges he faces: “There are many other women suffering with fistula who are not able to access treatment due to lack of information or challenges in accessing health care.” (That’s where you can help!)

Surgeons like Dr. Musoba allow fistula survivors who have been shunned the chance to reintegrate into society, return to school, and live their lives with dignity. Their lifesaving work is restoring hope and rebuilding lives.

Fistula repair surgeries is a specialized skill that requires constant practice and exposure. That’s why UNFPA is working to deploy trained midwives and deliver critical training and resources to reach more survivors with lifesaving care.

But until we can deliver resources to even the most war-torn, remote, and impoverished regions across the world, hundreds of thousands of survivors will continue to suffer.

Will you deliver a gift to deliver obstetric fistula surgeries worldwide? Women and girls are counting on your support to recover from this devastating birth injury.

For over a decade, the Government of Zambia and UNFPA have partnered to provide fistula survivors with life-transforming surgeries to heal their physical and psychological wounds. Many of these procedures are conducted at fistula camps held at Zambia’s main provincial hospitals, where three or more doctors like Dr. Musoba gather to perform surgeries for several days.

This is the care you’re helping deliver when you make a gift. Thank you for taking action to help restore hope and rebuild lives.

— USA for UNFPA