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Jatu remembers the day her swollen belly rocked with labor pains. When asked her own birth date, she shrugs, but her small-boned frame, girlish grin and chipped pink polka-dot nail polish place her in early adolescence. During her confinement, she lived in a rural village in Sierra Leone, West Africa, miles from a hospital. When an obstruction in labor caused her delivery to drag from hours into days, Jatu delivered a stillborn baby.

Then, Jatu says, she looked down to find her bed wet with urine. She and those around her tried in vain to stem the flow; her condition continued indefinitely, leaving her isolated, ostracized from her community and alone to mourn the loss of her first child.

In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 2 million women suffer with fistulas, also known as vesico vaginal fistula (VVF) or rectal vaginal fistula (RVF), and approximately 50,000 to 100,000 new cases develop each year. At least 80 percent of these women are unable to receive needed treatment.

Jatu joined these millions of women worldwide. When prolonged obstructed labor causes a hole, or fistula, to form between the bladder or rectum and vagina, the woman finds herself constantly wet with a stench that drives her into seclusion. Proper obstetric care can prevent it, and one surgery can often cure it. But without it the woman often remains childless and abandoned by her husband.

Sierra Leonean obstetrician/gynecologist Alyona Lewis works at a government hospital in Freetown, the country’s capital, where she sees hundreds of women with untreated fistulas. In such societies where women are isolated and poor, they have no access to a hospital for the caesarean section needed in case of an obstruction, Lewis says. The average surgery costs $150 US, a huge fee for the women who end up with fistulas.

Too ashamed to attend church or seek help, these women spiral downward in depression and sometimes commit suicide. “It’s the worst nightmare any woman can think of or imagine for herself,” Lewis said, “because [it] turns the prettiest women…into a septic tank.”

John Kanu, a Sierra Leonean pastor, learned the problem’s immensity when a woman with a fistula came to him for help. “If others know that you suffer, they think you are a witch or have a curse,” Kanu said. “Often if a woman is married, the husband will wait for a while and see if she gets better. If she doesn’t, he will silently try to put the woman away.”

Kanu recognizes the church’s integral role to show God’s love to the women who suffer with fistulas. Women who are completely isolated find the simple love and concern shown them by church members a stark contrast to the rejection they’ve known for years.

Women from Sierra Leonean churches work with Lewis to provide a celebration ceremony for the women who receive surgery in her hospital. They teach about preventing fistulas and post-operative care, and answer their questions about God.

“It’s one great way that Christians can display true biblical love,” Kanu said. “If the church will seize the moment by assisting these women with their problem…it will make a big impact.”

Mercy Ships, a global charity with a fleet of floating hospitals, provides medical aid—including free fistula surgeries on its ship Anastasis—to developing nations. Staff members also train local surgeons to do the procedure, an effort which offers a more long-term solution. This year during seven months docked in Sierra Leone, ship doctors performed 144 fistula surgeries.

Gina Adjei, a Ghanaian crew member on the Anastasis, visits with the women recovering on the ship’s hospital ward. “They ask why we are helping them, and we answer because of the love of Jesus,” she said. Some of the women are so touched that they give their lives to the Lord, Adjei says.

Jatu is returning soon to her husband and village. He will take her back, she thinks, because his father helped her find a cure. Though she returns to her Muslim family and heritage, she cannot deny the love she saw while recovering on the Mercy Ship.

Still young, Jatu looks ahead to a life free from the stench and stigma that drove her to seclusion. She, like the fortunate few who find access to surgery, will be able to bear children and have a normal life again.

Susanne Eadelman formerly wrote for the Mercy Ship Anastasis and is currently a freelance writer in Grand Rapids, Michigan.