Imbruglia highlights cruel birth disease
2.23PM, Tue Jun 27 2006
Singer and actress Natalie Imbruglia is campaigning to highlight a crippling childbirth condition which affects millions of women worldwide.
Women in poor countries can spend agonising days in labour without medical assistance. The resulting damage, called obstetric fistula, opens a hole in the tissue between the womb and the bladder.
Fistula results in women losing their babies and suffering from chronic incontinence. For many women, particularly in Africa, this has meant being ostracised by their husbands and families. More can be found here.
Imbruglia, 31, is working with the United Nations Population Fund on a mission to help publicise and prevent the problem. She said: "It just should not be happening, that women cannot safely have a child in this day and age.
"How can you not be compelled to want to draw attention to this issue? If you could help just one of these women, to me, it is literally giving that woman her life back. That is how I think about it.
"They need a voice. Nobody wants to talk about being incontinent. These women are suffering in silence. It is shameful for them - you can see it in their faces."
Around 50,000-100,000 new cases occur in poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia and the Arab region each year. Child brides are particularly vulnerable to fistula because their bodies are underdeveloped.
UNFPA launched the first global campaign in 2003 to end fistula and has programmes in 35 countries to eradicate the condition.
Fistula can be prevented with skilled obstetric care and usually a caesarean section birth. Ninety percent of women with fistula can be treated with simple surgery.
