Australian ‘living treasure’ devoted life to easing the suffering of Ethiopian women

In 1959, Catherine Hamlin and husband Reg, both obstetricians and gynaecologists, got off a plane in Ethiopia, intending to spend three years working in a government hospital. They ended up spending the rest of their lives there, creating the world’s only specialist hospital for women with obstetric fistulas.

This condition, usually caused by an obstructed labour that damages tissue and leaves the mother incontinent, is all but unknown in the West. Until the Hamlins’ arrival in Ethiopia, neither knew more about fistulas than they had read in textbooks.

Earlier this year,

Catherine celebrated her 61st year in Ethiopia. She lived most of her life there, in her original house on the grounds of her

Addis Ababa Fistula

Hospital, adored by patients, staff and the Ethiopian people. She was often referred to as ‘‘Emaye’’, meaning Mother.

Elinor Catherine Nicholson was born in Sydney, one of six children of parents from strongly Christian missionary families. After graduating in medicine at the University of Sydney, she decided to specialise, although she wasn’t sure in what subject. This was decided for her when she heard of an opening at the Crown Street Women’s Hospital. She arranged an interview with the medical superintendent, Dr Reg Hamlin, a New Zealander and World War II veteran, 15 years her senior. She got the job, the two doctors fell in love, and married in 1950.

They worked in London and Hong Kong, then came back to Australia in time to see the 1958 advertisement in a medical magazine asking for a gynaecologist to set up a school of midwifery for nurses in Addis Ababa. They got the jobs, doubted that they wanted to go with their 5-year-old son, but got on the plane anyway, convinced God wanted them to.

They were stationed at the Princess Tsehai Memorial Hospital, a general care hospital, but the Hamlins soon found themselves doing a great deal of fistula repair along with their regular obstetrics. As word of their cures spread, suffering women, shunned in their home villages, walked, sometimes hundreds of kilometres, crawled or were carried into the hospital, hoping for help.

Even as the numbers of ‘‘fistula pilgrims’’, as the Hamlins called them, increased, almost overwhelming the hospital, Reg would drive around the town to gather more in. The Hamlins never turned away a woman in need and, indeed, often paid the hospital charges themselves if necessary.

Eventually, in 1962, they opened a separate 10-bed hostel for the pilgrims, but even this proved inadequate, and they started to plan, and then build, a full, independent, Fistula Hospital on nearby land, using donations, mainly from New Zealand and Australia.

It was due to be opened in 1974 by Emperor

Haile Selassie, but fate intervened. There was a coup in 1974, the emperor was arrested, and later found dead in his cell, and many of the Hamlins’ Ethiopian friends were killed or disappeared. The country was ruled for 17 years by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and was a time of war, revolution, enforced communism and famines. The Hamlins managed to keep working, often scrounging and conniving for supplies, as everything medical was supposed to go to the army.

In 1991, Reg was diagnosed with a malignant fibrosarcoma in his thigh. It was removed but came back. He continued his work as long as possible, but died in 1993. Catherine was devastated and seriously considered giving up the hospital and returning to Australia. Days after Reg’s funeral, her long-time gardener knelt by her chair, she recalled. ‘‘He took my hand in his, kissed the back of it and said, ‘Don’t leave us; we’ll all help you.’ ’’

Towards the middle of the 1990s, though, the hospital was again too small, with patients sleeping two to a bed and anywhere else they could fit. So Hamlin got Australian architect Ridley Smith, also from a missionary family, to design new buildings with Ethiopian architect Joseph Berada, and persuaded AusAid to put up the money. The new hospital increased from 40 beds to 300 beds, was officially opened in January 1999 and continues its work, doing more than 1000 operations a year.

In 1983, Catherine Hamlin was made a Member of the Order of Australia, and in 1995, was promoted to Companion of the Order of Australia. In 1998 she received the Rotary International Award for World Understanding, which came with US$100,000. In 2001 she was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal and in 2004 was named a National Living Treasure of Australia.

Then in 2004, Catherine was profiled internationally on the Oprah Winfrey Show giving the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital the kind of worldwide publicity that the Hamlins could never have imagined.

She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1999 and 2014. She was given honorary Ethiopian citizenship in 2012.

At celebrations in 2019, to mark the 60th anniversary of her arrival in Addis Ababa, she said: ‘‘I love Ethiopia and I have loved every day here. Ethiopia is my home.’’

She is survived by her only son, Richard, and four grandchildren. – Sydney Morning Herald

‘‘I love Ethiopia and I have loved every day here.’’