My Mothers Day column is about one of the great scourges of the developing world that arises in the process of childbirth: obstetric fistula. I’ve seen lots of grim things in my reporting, but a fistula in a teenage girl is about the saddest. Conversely, there’s nothing more joyous than a girl who has just had her fistula repaired and now has her life back again.

I’ve been writing about obstetric fistulas for a decade now, and I’ve seen tremendous progress. USAID, UNFPA and many other agencies are funding work on fistulas, and there’s much greater awareness of the problem. In addition, the efforts to prevent fistulas are essentially the same as those to prevent maternal mortality, so women’s lives are saved as well.

One of the Kristof traditions is marking Mothers Day by trying to make it not just Mother’s Day but Mothers’ Day, with the apostrophe placed to celebrate all moms. There are lots of ways to do that, and I’m especially grateful to those of you who responded to past columns about the Niger Fistula Hospital so that it is now operational. That’s truly something to celebrate!

Read the complete column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.