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Our MissionTo protect and restore the health and dignity of the world’s most vulnerable women by preventing and treating devastating childbirth injuries.

About WFF

fistula surgery

Our Beginnings

Dr. Lewis Wall founded the not-for-profit Worldwide Fund for Mothers Injured in Childbirth in 1995. Though our name has changed since then, our dedication to holistic care has not.

Guiding our mission and strategic plan is a Leadership Team, which includes a former Trustee of the International Continence Society; clinicians in obstetrics and urogynecology; professors in global health, medical anthropology and physical therapy; experts in health delivery; and captains of industry.

Hear from Our Founder

Our Leadership Team

Our Partner Philosophy

We believe that by strategically partnering with local leaders and organizations in low-resource countries, we can increase local capacity to address childbirth injuries and promote safe motherhood. WFF and our partners embrace a four-pillar holistic model to fulfill our mission.

WFF Grantees

Where We Work

Across 5 African countries, WFF has funded 4,878 surgeries and economic empowerment training for 2,187 women plus safe childbirth education for over 394,000. Explore where we work and meet our country partners.

Our History

In 2018, WFF joined forces with Seattle-based nonprofit One By One and brought their Kenya fistula program under the umbrella of WFF. Around the same time, WFF launched services in Burkina Faso. Today, we continue to support programs in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Niger and Uganda.

In 2017, we expanded our mission to treating and empowering women and girls with childbirth injuries. We had previously focused on women suffering from obstetric fistulae. This change was in response to high numbers of women presenting with childbirth injuries other than obstetric fistula. Pelvic organ prolapse, in particular, was an injury being seen more frequently.

WFF began by funding multiple programs and training doctors across sub-Saharan Africa to provide high quality fistula repair surgeries. In our early years, we identified the need for a model fistula hospital in West Africa. In 2009, 2010 and 2013, Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist, shared WFF’s mission and goal to build this hospital and helped WFF raise the capital funds necessary to make it a reality.

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