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About UsThe Women’s Health Organization International (WHOI) was established in 2012 with the goal to empower women, in Africa and the African Diaspora, to gain autonomy with respect to their individual medical affairs with an emphasis on maternal health. We aim to accomplish this objective through the improvement of health care and the dissemination of health education.
The founding of WHOI was inspired by a severe childbirth derived affliction known as obstetric fistula, which affects about 2 million women in Africa and Asia. The World Health Organization has called it “the most frightful affliction of humankind”. Obstetric fistula results in urinary and/or fecal incontinence if not treated. |
Board Members
Habiba Cooper Diallo
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Habiba is the founder of the Women's Health Organization International and she has been building awareness about fistula since 2008. She has appeared in Forbes , the UNFPA, HuffPost, CBC, and the Atlantic Business Magazine. In 2015, she published a book for young adults called, Yeshialem Learns About Fistula. She is an award-winning writer, public speaker and women’s health advocate. The Federal Government of Canada recognized her as an outstanding Canadian woman in 2019. She was also invited by former Minister of International Development, the Honourable Maryam Monsef (currently Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development) to speak on a panel about ways to finance gender equality in Canada. Diallo was one of Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 in 2013 and an American Express-Ashoka Emerging Innovator in 2014. In 2015, she was listed as one of the UK's Top 10 Black Future Leaders by Powerful Media. She was one of six finalists in the 2018 London Book Fair Pitch Competition and was “highly commended” for the Manchester Fiction Prize. She served as a Young Director as part of the G(irls) 20, Girls on Boards Initiative. Diallo was recently shortlisted for the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize. Habiba holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of London (SOAS). You can follow her adventures and work on fistula at: habibacooperdiallo.com
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Fatimah Jackson-Best is a healthcare researcher, advocate, and academic. Since relocating to Barbados from Toronto, Canada she has become involved in research studies at the University of the West Indies and with local and regional organizations. Most recently she initiated her own PhD research project which focuses on Caribbean women's maternal health and explores how women in Barbados experience the baby blues and postpartum depression. Fatimah believes that we all have the right to good physical, spiritual and mental health.
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Fatimah Jackson-Best
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Afua Cooper is an internationally-ranked historian. She recently completed her tenure as the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Studies at Dalhousie University. On February 1st 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recognized Afua Cooper as one of the women of African descent whose work has contributed to making Canada a better place for everyone. Her ground-breaking book on Canadian slavery, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal, was nominated for the Governor General’s award. Dr. Cooper has been active in the women’s movement in Canada through political organizing and in helping to establish a shelter for abused women and their children.
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Ellen Hickey
Hakim Adi
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Dr. Ellen Hickey (PhD Seattle, Washington) is an associate professor in the School of Human Communication Disorders at Dalhousie University. She is a speech-language pathologist, certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
Since 2009, Dr. Hickey has been involved in training local staff and families to facilitate communication participation and quality of life for persons with neurological communication disorders in the Global South. She has done work in Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Belize. She is particularly concerned with ethical issues in “voluntourism” and with the development of speech-language pathology services in low-resource countries. Hakim Adi is professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester. He is the author of West Africans in Britain 1900-60: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism (Lawrence and Wishart, 1998) and (with M. Sherwood) The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited (New Beacon, 1995) and Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 (Routledge, 2003). He has written widely on the history of Pan-Africanism and the African Diaspora, including three history books for children. He is currently working on a film documentary on the West African Students’ Union www.wasuproject.org.uk
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