Scholarship for Ethiopian Midwife

I am a midwife and a single mother of a daughter from Ethiopia. Many years ago, I spent a year in Sudan with Ethiopian refugees fleeing from war and famine. I worked with Traditional Birth Attendants, who worked tirelessly to support women suffering from obstetric fistula, a horrendous internal injury that many young women in rural Africa suffer from during child birth, due to lack of access to antenatal and intrapartum care.

Lindy working with Traditional Birth Attendants from Tigray, Ethiopia in a refugee camp in Sudan, 1985. (Image: Lindy Bestic)

What is an obstetric fistula?

One of the worst things that can happen to a woman or girl is an obstetric fistula, which leaves her incontinent, humiliated and lingering with a horrible odour. A fistula is a hole between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum. It leaves survivors leaking urine or faeces and sometimes both – through their vagina.

93% of obstetric fistula survivors give birth to a stillborn baby.

Women with fistula are usually outcast from their families and communities and forced to live alone, or with the animals.

This can be prevented

With the right access to maternal healthcare, these horrific childbirth injuries are entirely preventable. In fact, in western countries, obstetric fistulas are virtually non-existent.

When women in Ethiopia have access to qualified midwives they no longer suffer for days on end with an obstructed labour. Currently, 85 percent of births in Ethiopia still take place without a skilled birth attendant present.

The Hamlin College of Midwives provides formal midwifery education and training. When a qualified Hamlin midwife arrives at a midwifery clinic, new cases of fistula drop to almost zero in nearby villages.

Lette Hiwot, the very first Traditional Birth Attendant who came to find me when the refugees started arriving in trucks from the border. Sudan, 1985. (Image: Lindy Bestic)

How can you help?

With your help, we can raise enough money to provide a scholarship for an Ethiopian student to complete a 4-year degree at the Hamlin College of Midwifery in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Hamlin midwives have delivered over 22,500 babies and saved many mothers from suffering devastating childbirth injuries.

I look forward to achieving this goal together with my community.


There are now 34 rural midwifery clinics staffed by Hamlin midwives. These clinics have also prevented hundreds of maternal and neonatal deaths.


Two graduates of the Hamlin College of Midwives, Mawerdi and Seada (pictured above), work in Jarso health centre in rural Ethiopia. Since their arrival in 2011, both midwives have been integral in starting a community education program, which has seen deliveries at the health centre increase from 50 per year to a staggering 1,000. (Image: Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia)

Hear more about their life-saving work in the video below.