Educators Without Borders
Educators Without Borders
Saving Third World Mothers and Babies
By Essam Farag
Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese is a Canadian MD
who has dedicated her life to delivering compassionate aid to Third World
mothers and their babies. The 39-year-old—who is married to a journalist and
mother of a baby daughter--published a book entitled, Where Have All The
Mothers Gone? She is the founder and executive director of Save The
Mothers International. The
Canadian gynecologist and obstetrician is the director of the international
women's health program at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
When she learnt more about the tragic fate of many mothers who die with their babies in developing countries, she was challenged to go work with the poorest in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Pakistan and Yemen. In Hamilton, fewer than 1 in 4000 women will die from pregnancy complications, while in a country like Yemen, 1 women in 90 births will die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. As compared to most industrialized countries, many developing countries have very high maternal mortality rates.
Her first experience with mothers in developing countries was in Uganda in 1997 in a Canadian-Ugandan obstetricians and gynecologists associations project. She was the program's Canadian clinical director in the rural town of Kiboga. Her goal was to educate the local community in ways so that they could help themselves. In her experience in Zambia, she noticed that prolonged difficult labor caused many deaths and sometimes a permanent fistula (an abnormal connection between two organs).
Four
years ago, Jean Chamberlain moved to Yemen to help UNICEF and to teach at Sana'a
Hospital. One Yemeni women casually told her that she had lost seven children
while only three are alive! This shocking information encouraged her to
establish a program called Save The Mothers International (www.savethemothers.org)
with the goal of saving some of the 600,000 mothers who die every year from
pregnancy complications worldwide, work to establishing partnerships and
building new, self-sustaining infrastructures in developing countries, and teach
community leaders about the importance of good maternal care,
fostering a climate where saving mothers and their babies is a priority. Save
The Mothers has chosen to partner with Uganda as its first location for
impact. The program is planning on replicating their experience there in other
countries in the near future.
"Watching young women die needlessly is heartbreaking. Just this week, I brought a Yemeni women up from a village who had already lost two babies unnecessarily. We got her labor going, she had a sweet little baby boy, she was safe, and we all went home happy as anything. It is people like that that really put a human face on the issue," said Dr. Chamberlain about her ongoing experiences working in Yemen.
The work of Save The Mothers centers on the key beliefs in the dignity of all persons, regardless of race or creed; that adequate maternal care (safe childbirth and post-childbirth health) is a basic human right; in the role of governments to help ensure universal access to safe maternal care; and that it is the responsibility of the organization to promote this right for all women and to carry this out in an attitude of humility before fellow human beings. The organization offers professionals training, at the university masters degree level, to bring a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing the issues of mothers and childbirth in developing countries. Expertise in international law and human rights is sought and important for Save The Mothers in order to advocate for mothers' right to life. Teachers are also a major part of the work since they are needed to educate young women about maternity. Engineers and communication specialists are incorporated to assist in the improvement of the infrastructure in developing countries so that mothers can access care more readily.
The enthusiasm of Jean
Chamberlain in speaking out on issues of women's and children's health in the
developing countries context has led to the collaboration with some large
Canadian and international organizations including
the Canadian Society for International Health - www.csih.org,
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) - www.doctorswithoutborders.org,
and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) - www.acdi-cida.gc.ca
in both funding and providing professionals to work in the Save The Mothers'
projects.
Although Jean Chamberlain's organization is still in its early days, it continues to grow and develop very fast into a globally recognized and influential voice for the health-related concerns of mothers in the developing world. With the international support and professional expertise backing Save The Mothers in its early years, it can become the best example of success for its own cause.
Essam
Farag, BA Honors (Dalhousie), MA (Guelph) is a historian and political
scientist. He is the Production Editor of The Ambassadors Magazine. Email: essamfarag@ambassadors.net.
