Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award

Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese is awarded with a prestigous Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award. For more information, please read these two articles by McMaster News and the Hamilton Spectator.

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Chamberlain Froese wins prestigious humanitarian award from Royal College

McMaster News

By Laura Thompson
April 7, 2009

Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, an obstetrician and director of the international women’s health program at McMaster.

STM_McMaster_April_2009.pdf

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Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, an obstetrician and director of the international women’s health program at McMaster

A McMaster University assistant professor who has dedicated her life to making pregnancy and childbirth safer in the developing world has been awarded a prestigious humanitarian award by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, an obstetrician and director of the international women’s health program at McMaster, has been named the 2009 recipient of the Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award.

The award honours Canadian physicians who go beyond the accepted norms of routine practice to exemplify altruism and integrity, courage and perseverance in the alleviation of human suffering.

Since founding Save the Mothers, an international non-profit organization, Dr. Chamberlain Froese has worked to reduce maternal mortality by training leaders within the developing world to improve the health of mothers through advancements in education, social services, communications and legislation.

The program, based in Uganda since 2005, offers a master’s degree in public health leadership at the Uganda Christian University. It was specifically designed to provide professionals in Uganda with the leadership tools to advocate for safe motherhood and bring about change in their own communities.

“When I stand in front of a class of 30 people, I just realize that they will be able to do so much more than I will ever be able to do as an expatriate,” said Dr. Chamberlain Froese, who spends eight months of the year in Uganda and the remaining four teaching at McMaster. “These students have huge potential, and it’s a very rewarding feeling to realize that they’re going to take what they’ve learned and go way beyond wherever I could in Uganda.”

To date, Save the Mothers has welcomed 105 students – including four members of the Ugandan parliament. The program is also in the process of expanding to other countries in East Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania.

The program is needed as more than 525,000 women in the developing world die each year from preventable complications of childbirth and pregnancy. Compare that to Canada, where approximately 15 women succumb to maternal health problems each year, Dr. Chamberlain Froese said.

“I look at the issue of safe motherhood as just a silent tragedy that’s been going on for the last 100 years,” she said. “It’s like anything in life, if no one pays attention or people don’t realize that it’s abnormal, it just keeps on going. And that’s the way it’s been in the developing world.”

Prior to establishing Save the Mothers, Dr. Chamberlain Froese worked as an obstetrician in Yemen, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Pakistan. Her first international experience with mothers in need was in Uganda in 1997, where she worked as clinical director of a project with the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and the Association of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Uganda.

The Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award is named in honour of Canadian surgeon Dr. Lucille Teasdale and her physician husband, Dr. Piero Corti. For 35 years, the couple dedicated their lives to bringing medical services to the Gulu region of Uganda amidst war, poverty and disease. Together, they transformed a small missionary dispensary into a modern teaching hospital which is now almost entirely staffed by Ugandan health-care professionals.

“Change in any society takes time,” Dr. Chamberlain Froese said. “I think we have to have the long-view approach, very much like Lucille Teasdale did, to see change. The hospital that she started in that area has taken a long time. I think safe motherhood globally is also going to take a long time to see real change.”

Dr. Chamberlain Froese will receive the Royal College’s Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award at the annual clinical meeting of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada in June 2009.

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Saving mothers…one at a time

The Hamilton Spectator

By Wade Hemswirth
April 8, 2009

Another miracle made possible by ‘saint’ … Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese with Ugandan mother Alice and baby Divine.

STM_HamiltonSpectator_April_2009.pdf

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In Uganda, women die so often in childbirth that when it happens all you need to say is “a woman lost the woman’s battle.”

Uganda’s population is roughly the same as Canada’s. More than 6,000 Ugandan women lose their battle every year, compared to
about 15 in Canada.

Throughout the developing world, 525,000 mothers die in pregnancy and childbirth every year. More than a quarter of them bleed to death for want of a 33-cent vial of medicine to stop bleeding.

A McMaster obstetrician and professor who has dedicated herself to helping mothers in some of the world’s poorest countries survive pregnancy and childbirth is receiving a major humanitarian award from her colleagues in the field.

Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, founder of Save the Mothers International and director of McMaster University’s international women’s health program, has been named the recipient of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada’s 2009 Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award. The award honours doctors for altruism, integrity, courage and perseverance in the relief of human suffering.

“She’s one of those very dedicated professionals who wants to change the world we live in,” said Dr. Patrick Mohide, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster, who submitted the nomination. “To me, she’s close to a saint.” Chamberlain Froese, 44, teaches at McMaster four months of the year and spends the other eight in Uganda, trying to save mothers from preventable deaths.

“Truly, those are the real heroes and I feel my role is to let their voices be heard,” she said by e-mail from Uganda. “My hope and prayer is that this award raises the volume for these vulnerable mothers and children so that the tragedy is first of all recognized and then systematically addressed.”

Save the Mothers trains leaders in the developing world to improve the health of others through education, social services, communication and legislation. “You only need to actually be in that environment once — to see a woman or a child die, knowing that it’s completely preventable — to make you want to do something,” said Dr. Lynda Redwood-Campbell, a family medicine professor at McMaster with an interest in global health. “That’s what Jean’s trying to do: to change the whole way of thinking about the problem.”

Chamberlain Froese, herself a mother of two young children, has also worked in Yemen, Zimbabwe, Congo, Zambia and Pakistan — sometimes at risk to her own safety. “I am simply one person who has landed in this big field,” she said.

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