A Walk to Beautiful

Last night a few staffers from The Body Shop including yours truly were lucky enough to attend the opening night of the first Australian Human Rights Arts & Film Festival at the RMIT Capitol Theatre in Melbourne. All thanks to our friends and partners Amnesty International.

We saw A Walk to Beautiful. It's the story of five women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity.


I was deeply moved and outraged by this movie. These women are forced into marriage and sex and child birth when they are still just children. The lack of basic rural health services (or even roads in least developed countries like Ethiopia) means some women can't get to a nurse let alone a doctor or obstetrician to help them during child birth.

There's a high percentage of easily preventable miscarriages, still-births and even maternal deaths compared to develop countries. The movie focuses on the problem of obstetric fistula - a hole in the birth canal caused by prolonged labour without prompt medical intervention, usually a Caesar section. The woman is left with chronic incontinence and, in most cases, a stillborn baby. On top of the trauma of losing their baby, fistula causes the added psychological suffering of humiliation and social alienation.


The facts:

• The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates (but as this month's Gapcast on maternal health illustrates it could be a gross underestimate) 500,000 women actually die in childbirth every year.
• More than 2 million women live with fistula worldwide.
• In Ethiopia, there are 59 ob-gyns and 1,000 midwives for a population of 65 million.
• Number of patients treated at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital every year: 1200
• Number of obstetric fistula cases occurring in Ethiopia alone each year: 9,000
• Number of new obstetric fistula cases resulting from childbirth occurring worldwide each year: 50,000-100,000
• More than 99% of The Fistula Hospital patients are illiterate. (The hospital teaches all patients the Amharic Fideles and the Oromiyffa alphabets.)

"Fistula is the single most dramatic aftermath of neglected childbirth"- WHO

How You Can Help:

• Get informed! Next time you're at the video store or the cinemas - challenge yourself to watch a human rights related movie like A Walk to Beautiful, Lost Boys of Sudan or Hotel Rwanda every now and again. Watch a movie - it's such an easy way to learn more, become passionate and motivated to change your life and the world.
  
• Go to the Human Rights Film Festival!
  
• Join the global Campaign to End Fistula - championed by 'our own' Natalie Imbruglia.
• Donate directly to the Worldwide Fistula Fund or Hamlin Fistula Hospital featured in the movie which was started in 1974 by a doctor couple from Adelaide.
• Be outraged about human rights abuses - not just when it involves a westerner (see the current British Teacher Jailed for naming a Teddy Mohammad controversy).
  
• Join Amnesty International

Adam Valvasori - Values Manager