Narrated by Academy Award winning actress Meryl Streep, SHOUT GLADI GLADI celebrates the extraordinary people who rescue African women and girls from obstetric fistula, a medical condition that can turn them into reviled outcasts. This 10-minute excerpt from the full film presents the patients as they tell stirring tales of their struggles and triumphs. Everything culminates with the exuberant Gladi Gladi ceremony, a singing and dancing blowout that marks the day the women return home cured.
Produced by the Freedom from Fistula Foundation.
What is obstetric Fistula?
An obstetric fistula occurs during an obstructed labour when emergency care is unavailable.
Women suffering from obstructed labour often struggle until the baby dies. During this agonising process loss of circulation causes tissue to die, leaving large gaps between the birth canal and bladder or rectum, causing incontinence.
Most women and girls suffering with obstetric fistula are ostracised by their families and communities as they smell and are constantly wet, leaving them to live as outcasts.
Fistula is all but eradicated in the developed world.
In contrast, it occurs to thousands of women and girls in Africa every day and they have no-one to help.