Save The Mothers

With the motto "Save a Mother, Save a Child," Save the Mothers is an innovative training program that helps save mothers and children in the developing world who die during childbirth.

Click here and scroll to the May 10, 2009 episode to watch a 7-minute feature on Save the Mothers on the Global TV program 16:9 The Bigger Picture.

 

 

Maternal mortality has been called "the last unreached frontier of modern medicine," and is among the world's most under-reported stories. About 525,000 mothers now die worldwide annually from preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. It's not commonly known that maternal deaths claimed the lives of more women in the 20th century than soldiers killed in either world war; and from 1980 to 2000, childbirth claimed more women than AIDS. Many of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, including 6,000 every year in Uganda, where Save the Mothers has its international training centre.

In response, in 2005 Canadian obstetrician Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese launched the multi-disciplinary program Save the Mothers in Uganda, Africa. In 2009, Save the Mothers has had more than 100 students enrolled or graduated at its traning centre in Mukono, Uganda. The program has recently expanded for Kenyans and has plans to further expand into other developing countries.

Save the Mothers graduates now include several African Members of Parliament who are advocating and enacting new laws to protect vulnerable mothers in Uganda. The program is also training health care leaders to improve access and care for mothers and children, lawyers to advocate for women’s rights, journalists to publicize the stories of needy mothers and children, educators to design and tech curriculum on safe motherhood, and community and faith activists to take the message to their groups.

Dr. Chamberlain Froese lives most of the year in Uganda, and four months every year in Hamilton, ON, where she practices medicine and teaches at McMaster University Hospital. She is the 2009 recipient of the Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award, a prestigious award given annually by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada to a physician who goes beyond the accepted norms to exemplify altruism and integrity, courage and perseverance in the alleviation of human suffering.

To learn more about the needs of mothers and children in the developing world, order Dr. Chamberlain Froese’s book Where Have All the Mothers Gone? ($14.99 plus shipping), at www.savethemothers.org. To be put on the Save the Mothers newsletter list, please contact manager(at)savethemothers.org