Opening of the third meeting of the Regional Coordination Committee for the Medical and Financial support programme for women and girls suffering from obstetric fistula in ECOWAS Member States

The ECOWAS Centre for Gender Development (CCDG) is holding the third meeting of the Regional Coordination Committee for the Medical and Financial Support Programme for Women and Girls Suffering from Obstetric Fistula in ECOWAS Member States from May 21 to 23, 2025, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

This meeting is part of the implementation of the CCDG 2025 Fistula Programme, which aims to support three (3) Member States; Guinea, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, in launching new projects to combat obstetric fistula in their respective countries.

As a reminder, in 2023, the CCDG provided financial and medical support to eight (8) Member States – Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, and Togo, for the implementation of obstetric fistula projects.

The main objective of the Fistula Programme’s selection committee meeting is to assess the implementation status of the eight (8) projects funded by the CCDG in 2023, and to review and validate the project documents submitted by the three (3) beneficiary Member States for the year 2025.

It is worth noting that this third regional committee meeting is taking place in the special context of ECOWAS’ Golden Jubilee.Thus, in anticipation of celebrating ECOWAS’s 50th anniversary on May 28, 2025, the CCDG is organizing its commemoration day on May 23.

In parallel with this event, the CCDG, in collaboration with the UNFPA Regional Office for West and Central Africa, plans to organize a webinar on May 23, 2025, to mark the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula under the theme “Her Health, Her Right: Shaping a Future Without Fistula.”