Halimat
Help keep hope alive for mothers, like Halimat in Nigeria, living with the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula.
Please send your transforming gift today!
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:18
Who could possibly be more brokenhearted and crushed than a woman like Halimat? She felt like the only mother alive with the debilitating condition of obstetric fistula. Who else on earth would be uncontrollably leaking urine – day in, day out – through a wound in her birth canal.
“I’ve never known of any woman with this condition,” she said. “Not ever in my life.”
Little did she realise that across the world today – and especially in Nigeria – hundreds of thousands of mothers are suffering in this way. The silence around obstetric fistula is deafening. We are full of admiration and respect for people like you, who are prepared to put taboos aside and support this life-restoring fistula ministry.
Please help heal grieving mothers living with obstetric fistula. We are so glad that people like you care about these sisters of ours who are made in God’s image but are hidden in shame.
Obstetric fistula never goes away on its own. Without the generous support of people like you, mothers with obstetric fistula will spend the rest of their lives constantly leaking urine and sometimes even bodily waste.
Please prayerfully consider sending your gift today to help keep hope alive for mothers, like Halimat, living with the life-long smell, shame and isolation of obstetric fistula.
Halimat has lived with this relentless leaking for seven unbearable years. Without hope of ever being healed.
It started, as obstetric fistula usually does, with a prolonged labour. With baby’s head pressing too hard and for too long against Halimat’s bladder, and without skilled maternal healthcare, the blood supply in her birth canal was cut off for too long.
This rarely happens in New Zealand childbirth, where midwives intervene to restart labour or call for emergency surgery. Few people here know how debilitating living with obstetric fistula is: how a woman can go for years, decades, even a lifetime – constantly cleaning and wrapping herself, separating herself from society, because she cannot stop her body from leaking its waste.
Halimat left the hospital glad her baby survived – as she already knew the grief of losing a child – but little did she know that inside her, a fistula had already occurred.
A few days later, a tiny hole from her bladder to her birth canal started to leak urine.
She was shocked and mortified that she could not control the flow!
Obstetric fistula is a constant humiliation that severely limits a mother’s ability to lead her life and be part of her community. No matter how much she scrubs, wraps and launders, someone with a sensitive nose will turn away, and a mother’s heart will break all over again.
Today, please share your blessings with a mother who thinks she is all alone. By sending your gift she can be found, embraced and healed through skilled surgery and caring ministry.
This year up to one hundred thousand mothers will develop an obstetric fistula due to traumatic childbirth. Year by year that builds up. Right now, it is estimated there are approximately two million mothers globally trying to cope with the endless leaking and smell of obstetric fistula. Why then is obstetric fistula virtually unknown in New Zealand apart from caring cbm supporters like you?
It is because obstetric fistula only really affects mothers’ lives in places of extreme poverty, where there are virtually no resources for maternal healthcare.
One such place is Nigeria. In fact, Nigeria is one of the ten most dangerous places for a mother to give birth. Of the up to one hundred thousand cases of obstetric fistula next year, forty thousand will occur in Nigeria.
Halimat cut herself off from other people. She shrouded herself, so no-one could see the adult pads swaddled around her.
Five pads a day, every day of the year, financially ruined Halimat’s family – and yet the pads cost just a few cents a day.
That tells you what great poverty her family faces. Washcloths and laundry would cost even more. Her money for pads should have bought food, paid for school fees for the children, or built up their livelihood. Yet Halimat had no choice. The smell of leaking urine kept her in chains of heartbreak, with her skin raw from scrubbing.
After nine months of humiliation, Halimat endured another tragic disappointment. She had found a hospital that would repair her obstetric fistula. She bared her soul to them, and spoke of her disgrace, so they offered surgery.
Hope grew in Halimat’s heart… but then it was dashed and shattered. Her surgeon had never learned the straightforward yet delicate technique of obstetric fistula repair, yet attempted it anyway. It failed.
Halimat left the hospital leaking just as much as she ever had, but significantly poorer and feeling a great loss of hope.
That would not happen with a correctly trained surgeon like those funded by cbm. It is why your support is urgently needed to help train doctors and medical teams for this dignity-restoring work.
Just think what your gift will do. By helping to train a surgeon, your gift will bless many hundreds of mothers over an entire surgical career. So please, if you can, send your gift for obstetric fistula surgery, training and aftercare today.
Disappointed and distraught, Halimat resigned herself to a lifetime of humiliation. Her world shrank. To walk freely became impossible. “I was not free at all. If I went anywhere, I had to protect myself,” she explained, mournfully.
She lived with a soul-destroying dilemma. If she drank water to keep herself well, the leaking increased, soaking the incontinence pads she couldn’t afford. If she didn’t drink, she harmed herself through dehydration, and her concentrated urine reeked, bringing more humiliation.
Then one day she overheard a very unusual broadcast. It was a radio programme sponsored by caring people like you. Speaking about the unspeakable. Telling Halimat she was not the only leaking mother in the world. Others have obstetric fistula too.
That broadcast was Halimat’s breakthrough!
Because of the loving kindness of people like you, she was able to contact the cbm-funded SFHF programme – Sustainable Family Healthcare Foundation – and learned about the mission to support mothers with obstetric fistula in Nigeria.
Halimat discovered that it was possible for mothers to receive world-class, reliable obstetric fistula surgery. What’s more, it is absolutely free.
What a remarkable blessing your gift can be to the world’s most crushed and heartbroken mothers!
Soon, Halimat was climbing aboard a minibus and looking into the eyes of sisters she had never dreamed of meeting: other women living with obstetric fistula. Sisters in sorrow. Sisters in hope!
Together they travelled 12 hours to the capital city of Abuja, and the Kwali General Hospital.
For the second time, Halimat had obstetric fistula surgery, but this time it was successful. Her cbm-funded surgeon was well-trained and capable, thanks to the generosity of supporters just like you.
We’re delighted to let you know how much this humiliated mother has been blessed. Halimat’s leaking has stopped. Her smell has ceased. Her cost of pads and laundering has been lifted. Her social loneliness, shame and humiliation is over.
“I don’t have the words to completely express how I really feel about the surgery,” Halimat beamed. “Life will become easier for me. I should be able to save some money. I am very happy.”
Of course, as a mother, Halimat immediately started thinking of others. She wants to share the good news that mothers with obstetric fistula are not alone. She wants to tell them that a friend like you is prepared to help, all the way from New Zealand.
“I will volunteer my time or whatever I have,” Halimat says.
Please join her in this wonderful mission, by sending your gift for mothers with obstetric fistula, today.
Your gift will help find mothers hidden in shame and isolation living with obstetric fistula, and help support life-restoring obstetric fistula surgery, aftercare medication and livelihood programmes to help mothers live independently. Your gift can help train healthcare staff around the prevention of obstetric fistula.
Thank you for being willing to bring hope and healing to humiliated mothers like Halimat. They are crushed, they are heartbroken, but your gift will show them that the love of the Lord is near – and so is freedom, finally, from the endless leaking misery of their obstetric fistula.
Your gift will help find and heal the world’s most crushed and heartbroken mothers – and will train surgeons with the skills to set hundreds more mothers free forever. Thank you for sending your gift today.
