From Awareness to Action: Taking Reproductive Health Care Closer to Women in Butere.

A woman should not have to live with pain, incontinence or other reproductive health challenges simply because she does not know that treatment exists.

Yet for many women, particularly those living in underserved communities, the distance between knowing something is wrong and knowing where to seek help can be enormous.

WADADIA’s community outreach programme is designed to close that gap.

In Butere, the WADADIA team engaged community leaders, community health workers and community members in conversations around reproductive health conditions that frequently remain unrecognised or untreated—including obstetric fistula and other childbirth injuries, pelvic floor conditions, fibroids and other neglected surgical conditions.

The conversations were deliberately community-centred.

Rather than simply delivering health messages, the team created space for community actors to ask questions, share what they encounter in their communities and strengthen their understanding of when and where women should be referred for care.

From conversation to referral

The outreach team, led by WADADIA’s Programme Manager, also screened women for possible obstetric fistula.

This is an important distinction in community health programming: awareness is only meaningful when it creates a pathway to action.

For women identified as potentially needing treatment, screening becomes the starting point for referral and further assessment.

Through this approach, WADADIA is strengthening the connection between community knowledge, early identification, referral and access to treatment.

Why community ownership matters

Community leaders and community health workers are often among the first people to hear about a woman’s health challenge. They are also closer to the social realities that can determine whether she seeks care or continues suffering in silence.

By working with these trusted community structures, WADADIA is building a model where communities play an active role in identifying women, encouraging them to seek help and connecting them with available services.

The objective is not simply to reach more people.

It is to ensure that the woman who has been quietly living with continuous urine leakage after childbirth, the woman whose fibroids have made everyday life increasingly difficult, or the woman experiencing symptoms of a pelvic floor condition has someone who can say: this is not something you have to endure alone, and there is a pathway to care.

The next step is yours

If you are a community leader, CHW, health facility, organisation or individual working with women in underserved communities, you can help strengthen this pathway.

Start the conversation. Encourage women to seek assessment. Connect them to appropriate care.

Because reaching the last mile is not only about getting information to communities—it is about ensuring that information can lead a woman all the way to healing.

💜 Know a woman who may be living with obstetric fistula or another reproductive health condition? Help her seek care.

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