Nonprofit Puts Life-Saving Surgeries in Reach for Women

An estimated 1 million women across Africa and Asia live with an obstetric fistula, a severe birthing injury, according to the Fistula Foundation. The injury is caused by obstructed, often dayslong labor during childbirth. Fistula leaves a birthing mother with holes between her vagina and bladder or rectum, causing incontinence. Babies born to women with the condition rarely survive.

Poor women with fistulas can’t afford corrective surgery, or even to address incontinence, says Kate Grant, chief executive of the Fistula Foundation. These women are often pushed out of their communities because of their poor hygiene and are sometimes believed to be cursed, Grant says.

“It demonizes her, it ostracizes her, it’s a misery,” she says.

Surgery is the only cure for a fistula and costs $616. That’s where the Fistula Foundation comes in: It makes grants to local hospitals to fund surgeries and recovery care for women with fistulas in 26 countries in Africa as well as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. The foundation paid for fistula surgeries for more than 75,000 women from 2009 to 2022 and aims to fund another 80,000 during the next five years.

The condition can be avoided by emergency C-sections or other medical care, which is why it rarely occurs in developed countries.

MacKenzie Scott contributed $15 million to the foundation last year — the largest gift it has ever received. “It’s almost impossible to put into words exactly how powerful that gift is for us,” Grant says. “I want to give MacKenzie Scott the biggest, deepest hug.”

Within six months of receiving the gift, the foundation added more hospitals to its list of grantees and increased the number of women who receive this life-changing surgery for free.

Here, expert fistula surgeon Goshon Kasanda performs repair surgery on a woman at Mbala General Hospital, a Fistula Foundation partner in Zambia.