I just returned from a trip to Mali with five courageous American women. We witnessed the needless suffering so many women experience because they fight to survive on less than $1US a day. Not only do they live in deplorable conditions, but often, no one really pays much attention to their health needs—sometimes, not even themselves.

But there are real glimmers of hope.

My trip was with Physicians for Peace, which sends countless medical volunteers like me to take their teaching skills to some of the most desperate and impoverished places in the world. Sometimes they deal with diseases unheard of in developed countries– none more devastating and debilitating than obstetric fistula, the result of prolonged obstructed labor.

The six of us joined with our colleagues at the Millennium Cities Initiative and Mali’s leading fistula expert, Dr. Kalilou Ouattara, to learn, to teach and to empower.

This sinister condition, affecting millions of womn– most in Sub-Saharan Africa—is, as Dr. Ouattara says a “barometer of maternal health. When fistula decreases, maternal health is improving.” Fistula is a frequent reminder of failed health care systems, gender inequity and the pervasive insidiousness of poverty and the toll it takes on women.

When you look into the eyes of a young teen girl like I did, who has experienced her second miscarriage after suffering harrowing labor, you can’t help but be forever changed. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of little girls just like her. We owe it to them to do more. A woman’s right to health should not depend upon where she lives!

-Pam Allen, PA-C