Jean Chamberlain Froese, an obstetrician and director of the international women’s health program at McMaster. PHOTO: FHS.McMasterA Canadian obstetrician/gynecologist working on the front lines of unsafe motherhood for 14 years says that the story of half a million mothers and four million babies dying every year has been grossly underreported and neglected.

Responding from her home in Uganda to news of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent decision to champion the cause through the G8, Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese notes, “We’ve had international emphasis on many worthy causes, but I think it’s fair to say that the many needy mothers of the developing world have been dying quietly for far too long. Thanks to the Prime Minister’s initiative, this long-time scourge that is killing mothers and leaving terrible consequences for children, communities and nations is finally on the larger political map.

Chamberlain Froese notes that in a typical North American city, fewer than one in 4,000 women will die from childbirth, but in sub-Saharan Africa, the number is one in 16. The main reason is that mothers don’t have proper skilled attendants at delivery. “When 15 percent of all pregnancies worldwide lead to some kind of emergency, the dire results are predictable,” she said.

Seventy percent of the estimated 525,000 mothers who die annually come from just 13 countries. Seven are African: Uganda, Tanzania, DR Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Angola. Outside of Africa, they include Pakistan, Indonesia, China, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Chamberlain Froese is founding executive director of Save the Mothers (STM), an international organization that trains professionals from developing countries to improve mother and child health through the students’ specific vocation and sphere of influence. An assistant professor at McMaster University, she lives and works eight months a year in Uganda where STM has become the leading advocacy organization for maternal and child care.

“There is a great need for leadership on this issue,” says Chamberlain Froese, “not only in and from Canada, but also for leadership within developing countries. This leadership needs to encompass all the social and cultural issues around unsafe motherhood and needs to come from the grassroots level: not just from the healthcare community, but from sectors involving the media, education, politics, law and faith communities.”

STM believes no mother or child should die due to pregnancy or childbirth, and to this end it has trained more than 100 Ugandan professionals in its two-year Masters in Public Health Leadership program. The program offers a multi-disciplinary approach, training not only health care leaders to advocate for Uganda’s mothers and children – but also lawyers, politicians, journalists, educators, community activists and religious leaders. Four Ugandan Members of Parliament have completed the program, and subsequently initiated new legislation to better care for Ugandan mothers and children. (See the TAP interview with Sylvia Ssinabulya MP November, 2009.)

STM’s training centre is located at the Uganda Christian University near Uganda’s capital of Kampala.

“STM is not providing western aid as such, but giving indigenous Ugandans sustainable tools for lasting change,” explains Chamberlain Froese. STM is already expanding into other East African countries and plans to expand into India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In recognition of her work, in 2009 the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada awarded Chamberlain Froese the prestigious Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award.

She is also the author of Where Have All the Mothers Gone? Stories of courage and hope during childbirth among the world’s poorest women.

-- www.savethemothers.org