Drop Your Knickers and Knit to Help African Women

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Women are being urged to “drop their knickers and knit” to help an Australian doctor performing much needed operations for women in Ethiopia.

Sydney doctor Catherine Hamlin first went to Africa in 1959 and has stayed half a century saving women from becoming social outcasts due to incontinence after childbirth. Now aged 85, Dr Hamlin still carries out her work at Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital and four regional outreach centres, which treat about 3,000 patients every year.

The hospital provides operations for women who have a fistula, or hole, in their bladder or rectum as a result of a prolonged or obstructed labour. Although easily treatable, with 93 per cent of patients treated at the Addis Ababa hospital making a full recovery, untreated women can become ostracised in Ethiopian culture.

To help her work, Australian women are being urged to “drop their knickers and knit”, a campaign to collect underpants and blankets for patients at the hospital.

The fundraiser is being held at the Sydney Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour from June 10 to 14 to coincide wirth the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair.

It’s brainchild of Sydney woman Maria Evans, who came up with the idea after visiting the hospital. “I found myself drawn there having just finished reading Dr Catherine Hamlin’s book, The Hospital By The River,” she said.

“She gave us a tour of the hospital and I felt so emotional when I saw the women in the wards that I felt I had to find a way of helping them when I returned.”

People can drop off new cotton knickers or sit and stitch knitted squares together to help make blankets over the course of the fair.

Hamlin Fistula Relief and Aid Fund chief executive James Grainger has just returned from visiting the hospital and said seeing Dr Hamlin at work was inspirational. “She has got a very steady hand and a great concentration of mind,” he said. “These young women just wander in from the countryside and they have really got nothing except the soiled clothes which they arrive in and the hope that they will come out cured and restored to a new life.”

Mr Grainger said the hospital was established by Australians, but the majority of staff were locals. “The hospital has a staff of about 400 now, most of those are Ethiopians,” he said.

He said poor communications and transport in Ethiopia meant many pregnant women were very isolated. “There are only four main highways in the whole country which is one and a half times the size of NSW,” Mr he said.

The hospital has recently opened a midwifery college to help combat the problem. “They (local students) are trained as midwives and will be deployed back out into their (communities),” he said.

Learn more go to http://www.fistulatrust.org/index.html

Courtesy StreetCorner.com.au

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