Protecting women’s health. Restoring lives. Focus beyond surgical treatment. She is us.
About WFF
Our Mission
To protect and restore the health and dignity of the world’s most vulnerable women by preventing and treating devastating childbirth injuries.
What We Do
We utilize a Four Pillar Model of Action to address childbirth injuries: intensive patient outreach, expert surgeries, social-economic empowerment & advocacy training, prevention outreach.
How We Do It
WFF partners with local leaders and organizations in low-resource countries to increase their own capacity to address women’s maternal health needs. Our partners embrace our Four Model of Action.
Where We Work
Across 5 African countries, we’ve funded surgeries and economic empowerment training plus safe childbirth education. Explore where we work and meet our country partners.
Our Leadership
Guiding our mission and strategic plan is a Leadership Team, which includes members of the American Urogynecologic Society (AUGS); clinicians in obstetrics and urogynecology; professors in global health, medical anthropology and physical therapy; experts in health delivery; and captains of industry.
Our Beginnings
Dr. Lewis Wall founded the not-for-profit Worldwide Fund for Mothers Injured in Childbirth in 1995. Though our name has changed since then, our dedication to holistic care has not.
One of the major obstacles to the prevention and treatment of childbirth injuries is the scarcity of medical professionals with the specialized skills necessary in developing countries. By building up local medical capacity to prevent and treat these injuries, they will become a problem of the past.
Our History
WFF began by funding multiple programs and training doctors across sub-Saharan Africa to provide quality fistula repair surgeries. During these early years, we simultaneously raised capital funds to build a new, desperately needed model fistula hospital for West Africa. In 2009, 2010 and 2013, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Nicholas Kristof, wrote articles in the New York Times about WFF’s mission and goal to build this hospital.
In 2017, we expanded our mission from a focus on treating and empowering women and girls with obstetric fistula to helping women with any childbirth injury. The decision was largely fueled by the high number of women coming to us who thought they had fistula but had pelvic organ prolapse or another injury.
