There is now a worldwide awareness of the vast number of women with untreated childbirth injury in Africa and other poor countries. These shameful injuries are preventable but this will not occur until there is improved access to quality obstetric care. While improvements in these services are the top priority, there is a great need to train more surgeons, especially nationals, to have the skill and resources to help these long-suffering incontinent women.

This practical manual has three main objectives: to draw attention to the urgent issue of obstetric fistula; provide background information along with principles for developing fistula prevention and treatment strategies and programmes; and contribute to the development of more effective services for women under treatment for fistula repair.

Essential Surgery is part of a nine volume series for Disease Control Priorities which focuses on health interventions intended to reduce morbidity and mortality. The Essential Surgery volume focuses on four key aspects including global financial responsibility, emergency procedures, essential services organization and cost analysis.

Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backward culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. With Beyond Surgery, medical anthropologist Anita Hannig unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation. Through her in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight. As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling “culture” the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical access in rural Africa. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.

The fifth volume in Dr. Jonathan Berek’s bestselling series, Operative Techniques in Obstetric Surgery provides superbly illustrated, authoritative guidance on operative techniques along with a thorough understanding of how to select the best procedure, how to avoid complications, and what outcomes to expect. Easy to follow, up to date, and highly visual, this step-by-step reference edited by Drs. Michael A. Belfort, Alireza A. Shamshirsaz, Steven L. Clark, and Karin A. Fox covers the most common operations in obstetrics and is ideal for residents and physicians in daily practice. Succinct text, bulleted points, and quick-reference tables allow you to review information quickly and understand best practices and potential problems for each procedure. Hundreds of full-color intraoperative photographs and drawings, as well as more than 20 high-quality videos, capture procedures step by step and help you immediately apply your knowledge. Each clinical problem is discussed in the same templated format: general principles, anatomy and differential diagnosis, imaging and other diagnostics, preoperative planning, surgical management, procedures and techniques, pearls and pitfalls, postoperative care, outcomes, and complications. Coverage includes Cesarean delivery, management of postpartum hemorrhage including hysterectomy for placenta accreta spectrum, operative vaginal delivery and repair of lacerations, obstetric fistula repair, and more. Perfect for a quick preoperative review of the steps of a procedure. Volume editors and contributors are thought leaders in their respective subspecialties and are known for their surgical expertise. Enrich Your eBook Reading Experience Read directly on your preferred device(s), such as computer, tablet, or smartphone. Easily convert to audiobook, powering your content with natural language text-to-speech.

Obstetric fistula is as old as mankind. While the incidence has diminished progressively with better health care in Western societies, the situation has changed little in many developing countries. Fistulae of pelvic organs, often monstrous defects, still are a major complication of child-birth causing misery to uncounted young women, and if they cannot find help in one of the very few hospitals with trained specialists, they became urological cripples losing everything: family, home and job. The magnitude of the problem is illustrated by some figures given by Reginald and Catherine Hamlin-about 700 fistula patients treated each year-a total of over 10,000 cases operated upon in their fistula hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethio pia. Most of these injuries could be prevented by better health care at the village level as some studies have shown conclusively. The incidence of fistula is an indicator of the standard of health and obstetrical care. The author of this book-Obstetric Fistula-is an internationally known Australian gynaecologist who for many years has been interested in all aspects of gynaecological urology, especially urinary stress inconti nence, other forms of involuntary loss of urine, and associated gynaeco logical conditions. He has devised a number of new operations to treat pelvic defects. Robert Zacharin's interest in obstetric fistula was a con sequence of his surgical activity in developing countries.