Facts:

Maternal Mortality Facts

Mothers are Dying

• Worldwide, 1,450 women die from preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth … every single day.
• That’s about three jumbo jets crashing, silently, every day, more than 500,000 mothers a year.
• As a result of this, and the neglect in maternal care, several million children also die every year.
• Those orphans who survive who are more vulnerable to serious sickness.
• Maternal mortality has been called “the last unreached frontier of modern medicine.”
• Maternal health is a barometer for a country’s healthcare system. If mothers die, the entire system isn’t working.
• In a typical North American city, fewer than 1 in 4,000 women will die from childbirth. In sub Sahara Africa, it’s one in 16.
• Most maternal deaths are in sub-Sahara Africa and southeast Asia.
• Uganda has more than 1 million orphans because of AIDS and mothers dying from childbirth.
• From 1980 to 2000, more women died in childbirth than of AIDs.
• During the 20th century, more women died from childbirth than soldiers killed in both world wars.

Causes of Maternal Mortality

• Most maternal deaths occur because of 1) lack of medicines and personnel, 2) a delay in transport, and 3) families blocking medical care.
• More than 90 per cent of the world’s 6.4 billion people live in the developing world.
• One in four women who die during childbirth simply bleed to death. A medicine, oxytocin, costing just 33 cents a vial, could prevent that.
• Half the women in developing countries don’t have skilled birth attendants at delivery. Often, they have only their mother-in-laws.

What Mothers Need

• Building more clinics or sending medicine will not provide a lasting solution.
• To make childbirth safer, developing countries need new, self-sustaining infrastructures and partnerships involving both medical and non-medical professionals, such as lawyers, journalists, politicians and educators.
• Such infrastructures will lead changes in attitudes and women having better access to basic maternal services and medicine.
• This is what Save the Mothers is all about.
  
  

 

Save the Mothers Facts

Save the Mothers

• Save the Mothers International is a Canadian-based, non-profit, organization developing societal partnerships in the developing world.
• STM piloted its first program in October, 2005 at its training centre at Uganda Christian University, near Uganda’s capital, Kampala.
• This training program for leaders in Uganda, a Masters Degree in Public Health Leadership, equips professionals from diverse professions to make a difference in their sphere of influence, and build new societal infrastructures. Uganda has among the world’s highest maternal mortality rates.
• At this time there are 4 Ugandan Members of Parliament enrolled in the Save the Mothers program, some of the 45 students now enrolled in STM. Others include journalists, educators and social workers.
• One immediate outcome is that one student, an MP, has initiated new legislation in Uganda to get maternal care on Uganda’s budget for the first time.

Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese

• Dr. Chamberlain Froese is the founding executive director of Save the Mothers.
• She is based at McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, where she’s an assistant professor and directs the university's International Women's Health Program.
• She lives and works overseas eight months a year, in Uganda, and is in Hamilton, ON annually from May to September.
• She worked for four years in Yemen prior to Uganda, and has also worked for shorter terms with the world’s poorest women in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Pakistan.

For More Information

• Read a biographical CBC column on Dr. Chamberlain Froese by pasting this into your URL: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/world/column_froese.html
• Read her book “Where Have All the Mothers Gone, Stories of courage and hope during childbirth among the world’s poorest women.” The public can order it for $10 plus shipping from 1-888-269-1311 Ext. 10 or 12.
• For media interviews or requests for a speaking engagement, (or multiple copies of the book) contact Dr. Jean at jchamber@mcmaster.ca, director@savethemothers.org, or her assistant Janice Wilson at manager@savethemothers.org
• For more information, or to make a donation, contact Janice Wilson at the above address, or see the donate link at www.savethemothers.com