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This Year, Annamai's Charity is The Fistula Foundation & The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, Africa.
A fistula is a hole. An obstetric fistula of the kind that occurs in Ethiopia (and many other developing countries) is a hole between a woman's birth passage and one or more of her internal organs. This hole develops over many days of obstructed labor, when the pressure of the baby's head against the mother's pelvis cuts off blood supply to delicate tissues in the region. The dead tissue falls away and the woman is left with a hole between her vagina and her bladder (called a Vesicovaginal Fistula or VVF) and sometimes between her vagina and rectum (Rectovaginal Fistula, RVF). This hole results in permanent incontinence of urine and/or feces. A majority of women who develop fistulas are abandoned by their husbands and ostracized by their communities because of their inability to have children and their foul smell. It takes many women countless years to cross Ethiopia before arriving at the hospital. They beg, pray, and court death along the long road to restoration.
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