You’ve all heard me prattle on about #pelvicmafia. It’s a worldwide group of dedicated Continence and Women’s Health Physios who spend their working days and often long into the night treating patients, reading articles, tweeting, Facebooking and communicating with their buddies around the world are on their very favourite topic of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. Julie Wiebe (click to read the blog) wrote a blog telling about its inception.
We have representatives in every country (just about) and all you need to be to be a member is be passionate about helping women, men and children combat the perils of bladder and bowel urgency and/or leakage, prolapse issues and pelvic pain plus a lot more. To join us, you just have to follow us on Twitter or Facebook, or on our blogs, or start a conversation yourself!

You can see we are good detectives (Karen our Canadian rep photographing her Aussie-Canadian pal Lori’s #pelvicmafia insignia on her T-shirt not her bottom) and we like wearing clothes that have #pelvicmafia written on them to distinguish us from other ordinary people.
Well for World Continence Week 2014 I am taking it to a whole new level.
We all know the importance of silicone bands in signifying groups, causes and all things really trendy. So I have created our own #pelvicmafia silicone band. It’s announcing World Continence Week which is June 23-29 2014. The best part about these bands is for every band sold, 50 cents will go to Professor Judith Goh and Dr Hannah Krause’s fistula repair work in Africa.
The theme for World Continence Week this year is Pregnancy and pelvic floor health: Managing the mother load and the significance of researching, educating and changing the outcomes for new mums is critical because this is when so much pelvic floor damage can occur. But with early, informed interventions, things don’t have to be as bad as they are if picked up 20 years later.
Now what I’m hoping is of course that women (and men) everywhere will be brave enough to start wearing their silicone band to raise awareness of the manifestly prevalent problem of incontinence and pelvic floor issues. The Continence Foundation of Australia (CFA)is the organization in Australia charged with the responsibility of dispersing information about treatment strategies for incontinence – and they do a sterling job. I have been a member of CFA for over 23 years and I have seen it grow and broaden its reach throughout Australia with incredible education programmes such as CALD – providing handouts and education forums in many languages; the Toilet Tactics programme; providing education forums for health professionals and the public alike and much more.
And this has happened with incredible financial support from the Federal Government. But of course this money is money VERY well spent. The financial burden to Australia of incontinence  is huge ($40 billion per year) and we know that simple education strategies – like those that CFA passes on – do make a difference (60-80% cure for stress incontinence). Our CFA is the envy of the Continence world. Their enthusiasm and drive comes from brilliant stewardship from Barry Cahill who leads this passionate group of people down in Melbourne in the head office and also has representatives- HPO’s they are called (Health Promotion Officers)- in every state. This initiative has seen the de-stigmatizing of incontinence and people rock up to public lectures now confident that this problem is widespread and nothing to be ashamed of.
So get on this #pelvicmafia bandwagon in the lead up to World Continence Week 2014 and let’s continue to spread the word via our new trendy wristband. They are being constructed as you read this blog and will be up for sale shortly. Keep an eye out on the book website www.pelvicfloorrecovery.com or send me an email if you want to go on a waiting list to buy one. Just send the email to sue@pelvicfloorrecovery.com!