Treatment Success Stories
A Holistic Treatment Team
The Votoka (“Rise Up”) team in Angola continues to formalize its Ambassador program, which identifies, trains and supports ambassadors to share the message of awareness, prevention, and cure for obstetric fistula. The team has twenty-four registered volunteer ambassadors, plus three ambassadors who have become full-time team members. We can never know how many fistulas may be prevented thanks to the work of these ambassadors, but we do know how many patients they identify: in 2023 and 2024, the number of patients identified by ambassadors grew to approximately 30% of all patient referrals!
Team members follow up with phone calls to ambassadors on whether they have identified new patients and to inform them of upcoming treatment campaigns. Sometimes patients require a second or third operation, and follow-up calls to patients serve to keep their spirits up.
Campaigns offer holistic treatment including presentations for patients about obstetric fistula, hygiene, the repair operation, wound care and catheter care, importance of drinking water, discharge recommendations, and trauma care.
At campaigns in Kaluquembe, the nursing and trauma counseling team were warmly welcomed by Dr Priscila and staff. The Waiting House in Kaluquembe is a beautiful place for our ladies to stay and recover; it is a space of dignity and welcome and hope.
Three ladies from Kapilbastu, Nepal
These 3 ladies from Kapilbastu, a poor district on the Indian border in Western Nepal, came for fistula surgery and all went home healed.
All fistula sufferers have sad stories and these women had experienced isolation, shame, and fear since developing fistula through prolonged, difficult labors without medical intervention. However, they were among the most fortunate to have husbands who stood by them. Though each woman had lost her baby, each also had surviving healthy children.
When they arrived, Gita, was depressed and withdrawn. She isolated herself by sitting alone and not talking. She was the first to have her surgery. In the days that followed, she slowly began to cheer up, even to laugh, as she slept in a dry bed with her catheter.
In Nepal, catheters are removed two weeks after surgery, first testing whether the bladder has healed. On the eve of her test, Gita was anxious. She said, “If I am not well tomorrow please give me medicine so that I will die.” Happily, her bladder had healed and Gita went home smiling. In the photo, Gita is the precious sister in the blue sari, smiling from ear to ear!
All three of these sisters are now free to be the wives and mothers they are called to be and to live their lives among friends and family once again. Healed inside and out!
Dr Sam Fabiano
Dr. Sam Fabiano is receiving prayer support and financial assistance from HFOS for surgical training in the west-African country of Gabon. Born in Angola, Dr. Sam began his current five-year training program in 2014 and passed his first series of exams in December of 2016. The accredited program focuses on both medical and spiritual components, equipping surgeons to perform surgeries in their communities while also ministering to the people. Though the program offers many surgical specialties and rotations, Dr. Sam has declared a desire to focus on fistula repair surgeries.
When asked what drew him to care for fistula patients, Dr. Sam said, “One of the things that I noticed was that these young ladies were a group that was receiving little to no attention from the country’s healthcare system and most of them were left to fend for themselves. At [the hospital], I saw them coming together, people from different tribes and languages, and helping each other as sisters … I have watched how these ladies went from one surgery to the next and eventually they arrived at that joyful day- A DRY BED. The experiences with this group of ladies increased my desire to learn more about fistulas so that I might be able to come back and help them get to the day they have a dry bed.”
Dr. Sam, his wife and their daughter have expressed their gratitude and enthusiasm for the partnership with HFOS and are eager to serve their sisters in need. Upon completion of his medical training, Dr. Sam plans to return to Lubango, Angola to serve in our partner hospital, Central Evangelical Medical Center (CEML).
