Something that moves me

I just finished reviewing a book about Dr Catherine Hamlin - an Australian woman who moved to Ethiopia in the 1950s to open a school for midwives with her husband.
They soon became aware of women with fistula - something that is unheard of in the developed world - and opened a fistula hospital that has since treated over 30,000 women, free of charge. Fistula occurs when a woman has an obstructed labour (often because there is no birth attendant - like a midwife) and delivers a stillborn baby. Many times this causes a fistula (a hole) in the bladder and/or rectum, and urine and/or feces continuously leak out of them.
As if this doesn't sound horrible and painful enough, the women become completely alienated from their communities and often are abandoned by their husbands. There are hundreds of thousands of women with fistula in the developing world. And it only takes a short (though difficult) operation to heal them.
The book I read was called Catherine's Gift, written by John Little who co-authored an earlier book with Hamlin called The Hospital By The River. And if you're one of those people who prefers to spend money on worthy causes rather than unnecessary clutter over the holiday season, you can donate to the Fistula Foundation at www.fistulafoundation.org or in Australia, www.fistulatrust.org.