Veil of Shame………

As I walk up to her, I cannot help but notice how innocent Sabrina's smile is. Her eyes look tired and shows signs of being through an ordeal, yet that still does not stop her from turning red and looking towards her mother when I ask her how old she is. Sabrina's medical charts say she is 25 but her mother is not sure if she is 20 or 21 years old.

Sabrina from Sunamganj, is one of the thousands of young girls who suffer from an obstetric fistula and has undergone surgery, to repair it at the National Institute of Fistula at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). When asked how she developed the condition she tells me that when she was 16 years old she was married off and soon became pregnant with her first child. When she was in labour, the Dai was unable to deliver the child. “I was in excruciating pain. I thought I would die. Only the baby's head was out and then the Dai told my relatives to take me to the nearest hospital”, says Sabrina. Once at the hospital, doctors performed an emergency caesarian to deliver the child. Sadly, it did not survive. When her mother-in-law discovered Sabrina's incontinence, as a result of the fistula that developed during the prolonged and obstructed labour she ordered her son to take her back to her mother's. According to Sabrina, her mother-in-law told her husband, “What will you do with a sick wife? There is no point of her living with us anymore. We do not need to be burdened with her or her sickness”.  She continued to tell me how humiliating it was to live in such conditions. Constantly washing her clothes and always shying away from social interactions. “ The winter nights were the hardest. ” recalls Sabrina. When I asked her how she had found out about the treatment of obstetric fistula, she said that a woman from her neighbouring community had informed her about the treatment being available at DMCH. “I am finally free of this sickness. I cannot wait to go back home”

A large number of the patients at the ward are more than 50 years old and have been suffering from this condition for over 35 years.  For now it seems like only through word of mouth the treatment for obstetric fistula has been reaching women suffering from the debilitating condition. Living in rural communities, women still feel a sense of shame and are unwilling to come forward and seek help for obstetric fistula.