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A Voice For the Voiceless

The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.

The Impact of Service "Speaking with locals and living in a country is the best way to learn about the real lives of citizens, not just the stories in the mainstream media. I will be more critical of what I read as a result of this experience. I also feel even more grateful for my education, and I feel a stronger responsibility to assist others who do not have resources or access to opportunities in their communities." Maria Skouras (New York University) volunteered in 2011 as a Peace Fellow for eHomemakers in Malaysia. For more 2011 feedback click here.

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Partner Campaigns > Women's Repro... > Women at Risk > Birth Spacing/Hig... > Nabinisa Saha

Nabinisa Saha

 “Mera parivar,” Nabinisa Saha says, pointing to a photo of herself surrounded by her children. My family. Her broad smile betrays her modesty and shows traces of a much deeper sense of accomplishment.

For a woman like Nabinisa, having eight children is something to be proud of – a mark of her contribution to the household and her ability to raise a large and healthy family. With such an achievement, however, also comes the consequences of high fertility.

Five years after giving birth to her last child, Nabinisa began to experience severe pain and vaginal bleeding. At first she thought her condition was related to her diabetes, and chose to wait out her symptoms in silence. When the bleeding still hadn’t stopped after two months, however, Nabinisa decided to seek medical attention.

Forty-five minutes away, in the nearest major town, Nabinisa had a check-up at the women’s hospital and discovered that her uterus had prolapsed. The staff of the hospital gave her medicine for a related infection and sent her home, telling her that the bleeding should stop and the condition should improve.

However, after taking themedication for a month, Nabinisa had not experienced any improvement, and continued to be confined to her bed by pain and bleeding. She had no one to talk to about her condition and little knowledge about why it had happened to her or what she could do about it. When Nabinisa raised the issue with her husband, he told her it was normal—that all women who have given birth experience this, and that it would get better over time.

Nabinisa is lucky, because after six months of deteriorating health, she was eventually able to convince her husband that she needed further treatment. Wary of the ineffective treatment that she had received from the local women’s hospital, however, Nabinisa had to seek other options. Through a friend of her husband’s, Nabinisa found a private hospital in India that would perform a hysterectomy – a surgery that would to treat her advanced stage of prolapse.

Despite the fact that she was unable to walk or sit comfortably because her uterus was fully extended from her body, Nabinisa made the journey from the Terai region of Nepal to India, where she was finally operated on and given relief from her prolapsed uterus.

When asked why she thought she had prolapse, Nabinisa just shrugged: “I’ve never asked myself. Why question it? This is just something that happens.”

Uterine prolapse is, for women like Nabinisa, just a part of life that comes with being a wife and mother.

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