Maya Fund – Uterus Prolapse

Maya Fund, Maya being the Nepali word for love, represents a group of individuals’ heart felt emotion and passion to improve the quality of living for women in rural Nepal. Maya foundation raises funds for the women who have been silently suffering from chronic uterine prolapse that require surgery and for prevention programmes.

What is Uterus Prolapse?
Uterus Prolapse is when the muscles of the pelvis are strained to such a point where they can no longer support the positioning of the uterus, and consequently the uterus falls. Research in Far Western Nepal found that 1 in 4 women have a prolapsed uterus. Some women as young as 15 years of age and some for as long as 30 years. Despite this morbidity being alarmingly common, the women who suffer are alarmingly silent.

How does it get prolapse?
The fallen uterus often results from hard physical labour, such as carrying heavy loads, especially during and immediately after pregnancy. Other causes of uterus prolapse are prolonged labour, forced child delivery by untrained persons, lack of postpartum rest, largely family size, inadequate spacing between births and poor nutrition. For the more advanced stages of uterus prolapse, treatment is often out of reach both in terms of cost and service availability.

How women cope with chronic uterus prolapse?
For women living with uterus prolapse, life’s basic activities are a challenge. Women often endure embarrassment and shame due to the foul smelling discharge. Urinating, walking, standing and even sitting are difficult and painful. Time off from work is not an option, and so the condition and the pain only worsen.

What is the situation of uterus prolapse in Nepal?
Nepal is the only country in the world where the life expectancy of a woman is lower than that of a man. The lives of Nepali women are challenged by deep-rooted cultural practices that constantly restrict their rights and keep their status low. Extreme poverty and difficult terrains exacerbate the situation, and the struggle for basic survival often overtakes any of their efforts to make tomorrow better.

It is not known what portion of women is suffering from what level of uterus prolapse. It is estimated that more than 25% of women in average are suffering from different level of uterus prolapse in Nepal. As a direct result of a lifetime of hard labour, harmful cultural practices and sub-optimal living conditions, Nepali women in the rural areas suffer from high rate of reproductive morbidities. Many women believe that reproductive health problems are women’s fate or they simply lack the support and resources to seek medical help.

Likeminded people and organizations joining hands together have tried to raise awareness on uterus prolapse with different mechanism. One of them is preparing visuals as below. Cost recovered from the sale of these visuals will be used for sugery and prevention of uterus prolapse of women in far western hills of Nepal.

It would be appreciated, if you could share this information to your friends and families. Any interested people who would like to know about the issue or to buy posters, books and CDs can contact to following address:

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