Ginger Spice Visits Rural Nepalese Villages

The 37 year old former spice girl is in Nepal to raise awareness of women’s rights and maternal healthcare as part of her role as a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

During her four day trip, Geri Halliwell said she had visited remote villages in Nepal and met with women in a safe-house who had been raped or rescued from being sold across the border for prostitution.

She also met women suffering from ailments such as uterine prolapse, a painful medical condition where a woman’s uterus slips from its normal position during or after childbirth.

In Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, women have little access to maternal healthcare and have a 1 in 31 lifetime risk of maternal death.

“We have come a long way but there is a lot to do as far as bringing women into the twenty-first century,” she said at a press conference in the capital, Kathmandu, looked on by her boyfriend Henry Beckwick, 30.

Maternal health issues, she says, do not receive widespread attention because they are viewed as “too clinical”.

“Some of the topics concerning maternal health care are not the most glamourous, they are not the most cute, they are not the most cosy, they are not the most media-friendly,” she said. But, she added, “Is it fair that a woman should die giving life?”

“I live in Britain I have to say I am absolutely privileged and grateful to have a national health system and if anything goes wrong, there is a safety net.

“But when I see women out in the fields that are beyond the base line of poverty that can’t get to a hospital, and they have to walk 60 miles to receive any maternal health care when they are heavily pregnant, my god my heart goes out to them,” she said.

She praised the Nepali women she had met in the Kapiluvastu district as “full of courage”.

The star, who has a two-year old daughter called Bluebell, has been involved with the campaign for more than ten years.

Around 1 in 10 women in Nepal suffer from uterine prolapses, struggling with basic activities and living in constant pain, according to the UNFPA.

Left untreated, the uterus can slip completely outside the body. Many require surgery but cannot afford the operation, which costs US$350. One third of Nepal’s population live on less than one dollar a day.

See Joanna Jolly’s coverage for the BBC here