An obstetric fistula, which is a hole created inside the body by a difficult childbirth, leaves a woman incontinent, smelly, often crippled and shunned by her village — yet it can be repaired for a few hundred dollars. Dr. Lewis Wall, president of the Worldwide Fistula Fund, and Michael Horowitz, a conservative agitator on humanitarian issues, have drafted the 12-year plan — and it’s eminently practical and built on proven methods. Evidence that fistulas can be prevented or repaired comes from impoverished Somaliland, a northern enclave of Somalia, where an extraordinary nurse-midwife named Edna Adan has built her own maternity hospital to save the lives of the women around her. A former first lady of Somalia and World Health Organization official, Adan used her savings to build the hospital, which is supported by a group of admirers in the U.S. who call themselves Friends of Edna Maternity Hospital.

Read more at the blog On the Ground and at the web site created especially for the book, Half the Sky Movement.

Also, there’s this brief article: Do-It-Yourself Foreign Aid:

Find a cause that resonates with you, learn more about it and adopt it. For example, we send checks to support an extraordinary Somali woman, Edna Adan (see above), who has invested her savings and her soul in her own maternity hospital in Somaliland (ednahospital.org).

Finally, Edna is featured some more in this audio slide show, narrated personally by Kristof, about courageous women in the developing world: A Powerful Truth.

A Stoning in Somalia

Incidentally, for anyone interested in Somalia, there is a superb aid project in the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland: a maternity hospital run by Edna Adan, a former U.N. official who used her savings and pension to build the hospital and fight death in childbirth. Edna is truly waging a heroic battle to improve health care and raise the status of women among Somalis, and it’s being supported by various Americans who know Edna and have been moved by her work. I visited her and have this video of her work.

I’ve often recommended that young people go and live abroad for a time, the better to understand the world — and also the better to see their own country. Somaliland is a wonderful little country, and I can’t imagine a more remarkable experience than spending a year teaching at Edna’s hospital.

Read the Complete Article

Mr. Kristof’s article, When Aid Harms, is written in response to the following message to him from Edna.

I am writing to you in desperation because we have lost ten of our best qualified nurses and midwives to International NGOs who do not support us during the training but who snatch the best from us with salary offers that we cannot match. Somehow, we seem to have become victims of our success because our nurses are the best in the country. We train four times what our hospital needs but still cannot cover the demand for good and responsible nurses. My greatest need is for Nurse/Midwife trainers for the next couple of years so that I can get the current 70 students in training graduated. We would welcome Interns to teach English, basic Sciences, and if possible, Nursing subjects. We are also willing to pay a salary of $800 a month plus food and accommodation to qualified midwife trainers, as well as the air ticket.