The Barbara May Foundation was established in 2009 to treat a surgical condition called obstetric fistula and also to prevent it.

Obstetric fistula is caused when the baby gets stuck, the baby is too big, mother too small or the baby is coming out the wrong way and can’t be delivered normally. Most women in Sub-Saharan Africa deliver at home with no recourse to get to a hospital.  The hospital is too far and/or care is too expensive.  A woman can be in labour for 3-7 days, eventually delivering a dead baby.  Soon afterwards, she starts leaking uncontrollably from her bladder and often her bowels as well.  The long labour has crushed and killed all the tissues of the birth canal, bladder, and bowel, leaving fistulae or holes from the bladder and/or bowel to the outside world.  She is ashamed, divorced, ostracized, and often suicidal.  It is estimated that there are up to 50,000 to 100,000 new cases of obstetric fistula each year, all of which are preventable.