Soon, women started arriving at the hospital from all over the country hoping for the operation. When the couple started their work in Ethiopia, there was little treatment available for the condition anywhere in the world, but the Hamlins developed surgical techniques, began to operate on their patients and eventually achieved a 93 per cent success rate. Obstetric fistula, formerly common throughout the world, is now almost non-existent in industrialised countries thanks to better obstetric care, however, it is still prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. Hamlin was horrified by the prevalence of obstetric fistula, which often made women with the condition live as social outcasts amidst the most miserable conditions. The midwives trained there are placed in rural health clinics around the country in order to prevent obstetric fistula in the first place, raise the quality of care in childbirth generally and lower the high maternal death rate.īorn in Sydney in 1924, Hamlin left Australia together with her husband in 1959 in response to an advertisement to work as obstetricians and gynaecologists at a hospital in Addis Ababa. The Hamlins also established regional centres to make the treatment more widely accessible.Ĭatherine Hamlin also focused on the area of fistula prevention with the establishment of the Hamlin Midwifery College in Addis Ababa. The facilities include reception hostels for women, who come from all over the country, and a rehabilitation centre for those badly injured. Together, they pioneered surgical techniques to treat obstetric fistula, a condition arising from prolonged obstructed labour that leaves the affected women incontinent of urine, with many of them also suffering from bowel incontinence.Įventually, the Hamlins built their own hospital in Addis Ababa, where women are treated to this day free of charge. Originally from Australia, Hamlin and her late husband Reginald Hamlin moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1959. Catherine Hamlin (1924-2020) was a renowned Australian obstetrician and gynaecologist, who pioneered the surgical treatment of obstetric fistula.
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