Hamlin Fistula UK
(formerly Hamlin Churchill Childbirth Injuries Fund)

This is a site dedicated to hope and rebirth, made possible by the generosity of our donors.  The task is enormous and we hope you will see in the photos on these pages how much you have done for these unfortunate women and how your kindness continues to reach out and help them where no other help is available.  The hallmark of the hospital is love and compassion.  Walking through the gate pictured above from the noisy and dirty city, the atmosphere immediately changes.

Background - Work amongst poor women with childbirth injuries

In 1959, Dr Reg and Catherine Hamlin, Gynaecologists and Obstetricians from New Zealand and Australia went to Ethiopia to work in the Princess Tsehai Hospital in Addis Ababa. They soon found the distressing state of many women who had complications in childbirth and who were not welcomed in the local hospitals because of the offensive nature of their injuries - the smell!

By 1975, the Hamlins had raised sufficient funds world-wide to build their own dedicated Hospital for these patients. A new 50 bed hospital was opened then and aproximately 25 women a week are treated for vaginal fistulas.  Great distances are travelled by patients, even from Kenya, Sudan and Somalia and often on foot.

Their efforts have been assisted by this charity, which was formed in 1968, following a fund-raising tour by the Hamlins to the Birmingham Medical School in England.

Dr Reg Hamlin died in 1993.  He is buried in the British War Graves Cemetery in Addis Ababa and the epitaph on his tombstone fittingly reads, "A man of vision and compassion".

The Hospital by the River!

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