Help the Tamale Fistula Centre perform more surgeries

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$12,000
Raised of $12,000 Needed

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Some good news

posted Fri 17, 2013 by Kelly Dudine

Great news! Friends of UNFPA is delighted to announce that we have reached our funding goal for the second phase of the Tamale Fistula Centre project! This funding will help continue what you started by improving the quality of care provided at the centre. In particular, the project will help increase the centre basic healthcare supplies, create a management committee to help improve centre operations and advocate for fistula prevention and treatment in Northern Ghana. This project was funded entirely by Kathleen Savicki and Jean Lindsay in honor of Zilpha Wilson Boppell, MD.

En route to transforming lives in Ghana

posted Fri 10, 2013 by Kelly Dudine

This project was fully funded on January 23rd, and Catapult delivered your donations to Friends of UNFPA on February 14th. We are currently in the process of transferring these funds to the Tamale Fistula Centre in Ghana. Your donations are scheduled to arrive in the country by early June, so the project activity can get underway. As a result, we’ll provide a more comprehensive update for you here on Oct. 5, 2013.

Preparations to put the funds to good use are in progress, and we’ve been working to share information about obstetric fistula repair with physicians in the region. For instance, the information of a visiting urologist shared by the Sunyani Regional Hospital with the repair facilities led to repairs for 11 women whose injuries had been declared irreparable due to the complicated nature of their fistulae.

In other important news, the United Nations has designated May 23rd to be the first ever International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, which coincides with the 10th year anniversary of UNFPA’s Campaign to End Fistula. The amplified visibility for the issue, combined with these funds will continue to help ensure Ghana’s fistula victims receive the care and treatment they need to restore their health and transform their lives.

On behalf of UNFPA’s Representative in Ghana, Dr. Bernard Coquelin, the entire UNFPA/Ghana team and most certainly the women living with fistula in Ghana, “We want to thank you wholeheartedly for your support ... and, again we say,….thank you…medaa ase!”

Health
Maternal health
Technology

Support the Tamale Fistula Centre by building its capacity to conduct more fistula repair surgeries through the purchase of essential equipment and the training of surgical staff.

Why we care: Obstetric fistula—a hole in the birth canal resulting from prolonged or obstructed childbirth—is a preventable condition that leaves up to 100,000 girls and women each year, with life-long incontinence. As a result of the stigma associated with the condition, women living with fistula are often isolated, neglected or abandoned by family and community, and left to rely on the charity and mercy of others.

How we’re solving this: Help the Tamale Fistula Centre in northern Ghana perform more fistula repair surgeries and meet the growing demand for fistula services in the region.

Since its doors opened in 2010, the Tamale Fistula Centre has successfully treated more than 200 women and girls.. The Centre, which is supported by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and other regional agencies, has one operating room, a 10-bed recovery ward and a staffing office. In order to provide treatment to the backlog of 100 women and girls awaiting fistula repair surgery, the Centre needs to buy essential surgical equipment and train more medical personnel.

Essential needs include the purchase of a hot-air autoclave and an anesthetic machine, as well as the service training of two gynecologists and two operating-room nurses.. The autoclave and the anesthetic machine together cost about $8,500; the autoclave is used for sterilizing equipment, a major clinical requirement in any operating room. The anesthetic machine helps numb the patients for the surgery.

These services will enable the Tamale Fistula Centre to improve the flow of patients and accomplish more work efficiently – ultimately shortening the long line of women desperate to transform their lives, and restore their health and dignity.