As a side note, I do also see potential for their current system to additionally cascade into more of the prevention side. I’m not sure of this. But, at least, they are definitely building up local obstetric health infrastructure around the world in long-lasting manners.
Sorry, I realize this is in the weeds, but I don’t see where they say they’re building up obstetric health infrastructure at all. They work with surgical teams to facilitate more reparative surgeries, but it’s not clear to me that those surgeons are providing any care before or during births. Again, repairs rather than prevention may just be the most cost-effective way to make immediate progress on this problem — I don’t mean that it’s not a good strategy!
I was looking at the Vision page which describes “in it to end it” several times as their vision (but vision statements are meant to be aspirational rather than realistic). An 88% cure rate on 100,000 surgeries is still 22,000 [edit, should be 12,000] uncured patients even after treatment, so I do think there’s a gap between the vision and what one should expect in a practical sense.
Sorry to write a 3rd comment in response to your latest one. Hope I’m not throwing you off, I’d be curious and enjoy hearing any additonal thoughts from you even if I disagree with them.
Just wanted to point out this fantastic Emmy-award winning documentary that profiles a few women who outreach teams managed to find and connect with a hospital that Fistula Foundation funded in Ethiopia.
One of the women profiled, the surgery didn’t work (so she would be in the 12%), but they did end up finding a less ideal workaround for her anyway as they continued to care for her.
+ btw your number should be 12,000 on the 88% cure rate, not 22,000.
+ also btw this was a good point about their methods not being perfect even if they DO reach everyone, that was a good rebuttal to what I had initially said! thank you for bringing it up and allowing me to respond further in the other comment I just posted.
+ my main point in bringing this point of “permanence” or “persistence” up… was more about what’s being aimed at in a broad sense.
FF is acting toward an end (or to be fair a near-end) to untreated birth trauma. whereas other orgs eg Malaria Consortium are acting toward an indefinite dependence on foreign help and pharmaceutical companies for something that does not end (nor near-end) the problem as much as keep it more under control.
thank you Julia for engaging with me. most people don’t give me much when I occasionally post here. you have helped me to think about different valid points and refine my own thoughts and how I word things. appreciate you !!
I feel like things are being looked at here in a bit of a bad faith manner. I apologize if I am wrong.
Yes “in it to end it” is an aspirational phrase, and limited to their “vision” page. It’s not at the forefront of any details of what they are actually doing on the ground.
I imagine the Fistula Foundation team is indeed motivated to see this problem eliminated from the planet totally.
Perhaps they will transform more to the prevention side as they finish their mission of tackling the extremely low-hanging fruit of curing 88% of the 1 million women who have these 2 conditions of untreated obstetric fistula and untreated perineal tears. That is the obvious thing to do for now and will eliminate 88% of the issue of untreated birth trauma.
People in EA think that we will all be immortal and merge with machines. And many other crazy things. But perhaps we will never ever be able to stop all women from being permanently incontinent due to birth trauma. To me this seems more than plausible.
They are indeed building up local obstetric health infrastructure, in some manner or another. I did not say they are currently providing care prior to or during births as you seemed to think I said. Obstetrics is anything to do with the female reproductive organs.
I merely speculated that as FF amplifies and supports the efforts of already amazing OB/GYNs around the low-income world, and continuing to build up their outreach programs that brings in women from all over the place in to be connected with OB/GYNs, that this could at some point spill over more into the prevention side of things. Maybe I’m wrong about that. That’s why I said I wasn’t sure of it. But it is not far-fetched.
Greatly increasing the number of women who are connected with OB/GYN doctors… knowing where they are located and what they can do, etc, you think is not building up obstetric health infrastructure? This is the phrasing that I’m personally using but the details here are correct. Many of these 100,000 women they have funded surgeries for didn’t even know their condition was curable beforehand. [edit to include this link: https://fistulafoundation.org/what-we-do/how-we-work/]
As a side note, I do also see potential for their current system to additionally cascade into more of the prevention side. I’m not sure of this. But, at least, they are definitely building up local obstetric health infrastructure around the world in long-lasting manners.
Sorry, I realize this is in the weeds, but I don’t see where they say they’re building up obstetric health infrastructure at all. They work with surgical teams to facilitate more reparative surgeries, but it’s not clear to me that those surgeons are providing any care before or during births. Again, repairs rather than prevention may just be the most cost-effective way to make immediate progress on this problem — I don’t mean that it’s not a good strategy!
I was looking at the Vision page which describes “in it to end it” several times as their vision (but vision statements are meant to be aspirational rather than realistic). An 88% cure rate on 100,000 surgeries is still 22,000 [edit, should be 12,000] uncured patients even after treatment, so I do think there’s a gap between the vision and what one should expect in a practical sense.
Sorry to write a 3rd comment in response to your latest one. Hope I’m not throwing you off, I’d be curious and enjoy hearing any additonal thoughts from you even if I disagree with them.
Just wanted to point out this fantastic Emmy-award winning documentary that profiles a few women who outreach teams managed to find and connect with a hospital that Fistula Foundation funded in Ethiopia.
One of the women profiled, the surgery didn’t work (so she would be in the 12%), but they did end up finding a less ideal workaround for her anyway as they continued to care for her.
+ btw your number should be 12,000 on the 88% cure rate, not 22,000.
+ also btw this was a good point about their methods not being perfect even if they DO reach everyone, that was a good rebuttal to what I had initially said! thank you for bringing it up and allowing me to respond further in the other comment I just posted.
+ my main point in bringing this point of “permanence” or “persistence” up… was more about what’s being aimed at in a broad sense.
FF is acting toward an end (or to be fair a near-end) to untreated birth trauma. whereas other orgs eg Malaria Consortium are acting toward an indefinite dependence on foreign help and pharmaceutical companies for something that does not end (nor near-end) the problem as much as keep it more under control.
>btw your number should be 12,000 on the 88% cure rate, not 22,000.
Thanks, you’re right!
thank you Julia for engaging with me. most people don’t give me much when I occasionally post here. you have helped me to think about different valid points and refine my own thoughts and how I word things. appreciate you !!
I feel like things are being looked at here in a bit of a bad faith manner. I apologize if I am wrong.
Yes “in it to end it” is an aspirational phrase, and limited to their “vision” page. It’s not at the forefront of any details of what they are actually doing on the ground.
I imagine the Fistula Foundation team is indeed motivated to see this problem eliminated from the planet totally.
Perhaps they will transform more to the prevention side as they finish their mission of tackling the extremely low-hanging fruit of curing 88% of the 1 million women who have these 2 conditions of untreated obstetric fistula and untreated perineal tears. That is the obvious thing to do for now and will eliminate 88% of the issue of untreated birth trauma.
People in EA think that we will all be immortal and merge with machines. And many other crazy things. But perhaps we will never ever be able to stop all women from being permanently incontinent due to birth trauma. To me this seems more than plausible.
They are indeed building up local obstetric health infrastructure, in some manner or another. I did not say they are currently providing care prior to or during births as you seemed to think I said. Obstetrics is anything to do with the female reproductive organs.
I merely speculated that as FF amplifies and supports the efforts of already amazing OB/GYNs around the low-income world, and continuing to build up their outreach programs that brings in women from all over the place in to be connected with OB/GYNs, that this could at some point spill over more into the prevention side of things. Maybe I’m wrong about that. That’s why I said I wasn’t sure of it. But it is not far-fetched.
Greatly increasing the number of women who are connected with OB/GYN doctors… knowing where they are located and what they can do, etc, you think is not building up obstetric health infrastructure? This is the phrasing that I’m personally using but the details here are correct. Many of these 100,000 women they have funded surgeries for didn’t even know their condition was curable beforehand. [edit to include this link: https://fistulafoundation.org/what-we-do/how-we-work/]