Halima is our oldest patient, a short crinkly woman who loves to dance. She is always the first one dancing whenever music is playing, shaking her hips with a big smile on.
She has lived with obstetric fistula for ten years. She developed the injury giving birth to her third child. Her labor lasted for a full week with no medical care or help. Halima was finally taken to a clinic and had a Cesarean section. Her child was stillborn and she never found out if it was a boy or a girl. However, before leaving the clinic, she did find out she had started to leak.
Months later, Halima went to Katsina (a hospital in Nigeria) for fistula repair surgery. She had two unsuccessful surgeries there. Her husband left her after the first unsuccessful surgery, and since then she has lived with her parents.
In August of 2011 she came to the Danja Fistula Center with the hope that our medical team could help her. Her surgery was successful and that she is finally dry. At the dress ceremony, she was radiant—full of hope for a better future and a return to the life she once knew. And of course, she was dancing.
