Healing Lives

In 1962, three years after doctors Catherine and Reg Hamlin arrived in Ethiopia, an illiterate peasant girl sought their aid. Mamitu Gashe was close to death and horrifically injured during childbirth after an arranged marriage - at the age of just 14 to a man she’d never met - in a remote mountain village.

The Hamlins’ Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital saved her and, in return, Mamitu dedicated her life to Catherine’s mission. Under the iconic doctor’s guidance, Mamitu went from mopping floors and comforting her fellow patients, to becoming one of the most acclaimed fistula surgeons in the world, despite never having had a day’s schooling.

This is the moving story of the friendship that saved the lives of over 60,000 of the poorest women on earth