[rph3664]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beautiful/

This aired on my local PBS affiliate last night. If you have the opportunity to see it, do so!

It's about the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, which is devoted to the treatment of obstetrical fistulas caused by difficult, obstructed labors. I understand that such a hospital once existed in New York City but modern medical treatment (for the time) rendered the facility obsolete about 100 years ago.

We just don't know how good we have it.

[oramar]

Oh it was quite touching. Those poor women were all such beautiful people. They wanted to be well so badly. God bless those that are trying to help them. One of the disturbing facts is that a lot of them spend there childhoods in a state of semi starvation which causes them to be very small adults and they don't have the room in their pelvis to delivery normally. The whole thing is aggrivated by the fact that they are married off at age 11 ot 13, which causes them to have children too early, add that to their small stature and it is a disaster waiting to happen.

[rph3664]

There is a longer version of this film, and I put it in my Netflix queue even though it hasn't been released yet. It features two other women, and longer interviews with the doctors and other staff.

If you read the interview with the Australian doctor, she gives an interesting perspective on why their families and husbands abandon them (or the women leave their husbands, believing they are no longer of use to him). It's not so much because of the smell or their failing health, but because they believe they have done something to deserve this. Part of the education they receive there is to teach them that this wasn't the case; they get a little tutorial about anatomy and physiology of the reproductive tract. Most of them know that sex leads to childbirth nine months later but not much more than that.

This area seemed to mostly have bladder fistulas, from childbirth. I have heard about other Third World areas where there exists a myth that if a man has sex with a virgin, it will cure him of AIDS, so men find babies and rape them, leaving them with rectal fistulas.

Incidentally, this myth is nothing new. I collect old medical books, and one from the pre-WW II era addressed this very subject - that some American men believed that sex with a young child would cure them of syphilis. This commentary in its entirety was extremely racist but it had to be viewed in the context of the times.

[Faeriewand]

I saw this on PBS last nite and thought it would be perfect to post here as well Such a sad story these women have, especially if they can't be cured.

[judyblueeyes]

I saw it, also. You can watch many PBS/NOVA shows on their website for free.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/