Dear All,
Since [[Catherine Hamlin]] was invited to lunch by the Queen last week
during her visit here, I thought her article ought to be improved.
(Hamlin's, that is.) It and its companion, the [[Addis Ababa Fistula
Hospital]] were a bit of a mess so I have separated them out and organised
them, linking all the awards and hopefully explaining Hamlin's
contributions better.
I mentioned her before in an earlier email on this list but now I hope that
readers can better see in these two articles why she is such an amazing
person and such a heroine - someone IMHO of whom everyone on this list
ought to be aware. This is a woman who is personally responsible for curing
thousands of women who would otherwise be cast out and without hope. And
she is still operating - still doing surgery in her mid-eighties and
training others to follow on. In the cosmic scheme of things, had we we
been born in a slightly different place or time, we might have been one of
the women who needed help such as she provides. All her patients have an
obstetric problem that we in the developed world do not have to worry about
anymore as we solved it in the middle of the 20th century. It is completely
preventable with good obstetric care and Hamlin has been giving that
selflessly and expertly for 50 years. Here is someone making a real
difference to women's lives and confronting problems far worse than name
calling. My hat goes off to her ...
Gillian