Obstetric fistula: the challenge to human rights

Author: Cook, R.J.; Dickens, B.M.; Syed, S.

Description: Obstetric fistula can be explained to result from different causes. These holes in the tissue wall between the vagina and bladder and/or rectum are most prevalent in resource-poor countries, attributable to prolonged obstructed labour and absent or inaccessible remedial prenatal services. Obstructed labour is often due to small pelvic size, resulting from women’s youth and premature childbearing and/or malnutrition. Poverty at national health-service and family levels often predisposes pregnant populations to suffer high rates of fistula. Global estimates showing up to 100,000 new cases each year and 2 million affected girls and women are probably gross underestimates. Fistula devastates lives of sufferers, who are often expelled by husbands and become isolated from their families and communities. Failures of states to provide prenatal preventive care (including medically indicated cesarean deliveries) and timely fistula repair violate women’s internationally recognized human rights, especially to healthcare in general and reproductive healthcare in particular.

Subject Headings: Developing Countries; Female; Humans; Incidence; Pregnancy; Prenatal Care; Rectal Fistula/epidemiology/etiology; Urinary Bladder Fistula/epidemiology/etiology; Vaginal Fistula/epidemiology/etiology; Women’s Health; Women’s Rights

Keywords: Obstetric fistula: the challenge to human rights

Publication year: 2004

Journal or book title: International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics: the Official Organ of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics

Volume: 87

Issue: 1

Pages: 72-77

Find the full text : https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.ijgo.2004.07.005

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Type: Journal Article

Serial number: 2736