Wash U. Doctor Featured in NY Times as Savior to Women with Awful Vaginal Injury

We shall let the New York Times' international wanderer-columnist Nicholas D. Kristof open this blog post with a description of obstetric fistula, a truly grotesque condition suffered by women mostly in the global south. Such a woman, writes Kristof,

suffers obstructed labor, has no access to a C-section, and endures internal injuries that leave her incontinent -- steadily trickling urine and sometimes feces through her vagina.

She stinks. She becomes a pariah. She is typically abandoned by her husband and forced to live by herself on the edge of her village. She is scorned, bewildered, humiliated and desolate, often feeling cursed by God.

But "the happiest thing" that could happen to such a woman, according to the column published in the NYT by Kristof on Saturday, is meeting Dr. Lewis Wall from Washington University's School of Medicine.

Wall launched the Worldwide Fistula Fund in 1995 and continues to do all kinds of medical work in Africa. He's also a Rhodes scholar and Fulbright recipient. Frankly, Daily RFT is disappointed that he's not more impressive. Check out Kristof's column here.