Press Release

For Immediate Release
Friday, June 4, 2010

STM_PressRelease_June4_2010.pdf

SENATOR BRINGS ATTENTION TO WORK OF SAVE THE MOTHERS

OTTAWA, Ont. — Recent attention given to the plight of mothers and children in the developing world has brought the work of Save the Mothers to the attention of the Canadian Senate.

In debates in the Senate on June 3, Hon. Donald Neil Plett, a Senator from Manitoba, read this excerpt about Save the Mothers executive director Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese. Plett read from an article written by Patricia Paddey in the May/June issue of the national news magazine Faith Today.

“As the world’s attention turns — finally — to the heart-wrenching issue of maternal mortality, it finds Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, from Hamilton, Ont., at the forefront of the issue.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his intention to make maternal and child health the focus of the G8 summit in June, the ramifications of that decision echoed in the heart of a Canadian doctor living thousands of miles away in Uganda.

Dr. Chamberlain Froese said: _‘I can barely share the news with people here without choking up, thinking of how important this decision is. I’ve slogged through the field of maternal mortality for the past 14 years, and honestly, this is the first time any kind of significant Canadian attention has been showered on this modern day tragedy.’_”

Reading more from the article in Faith Today, Senator Plett continued to tell the Senate: “This significant Canadian attention turned out to be an understatement. In the weeks following Prime Minister Harper’s announcement, something of a political and ideological firestorm erupted, and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff insisted any foreign aid funding for maternal and child assistance should include funding for abortion. That motion was defeated.

The news must be heartening to those who work in protecting and promoting child and maternal health. These individuals insist that, rather than abortion, the main issues are clean drinking water, access to safe and healthy food, shelter, medicines and quality health care. Such practical measures are clearly working. Maternal deaths have decreased from 526,300 in 1980, to 342,900 in 2008.

Dr. Chamberlain Froese knows from experience that without the political will, little real change occurs. She says:
“I am learning more and more that maternal and child health is very related to politics in developing countries.”

From the time you had your coffee today until the same time tomorrow, 1,600 women will have died from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Ninety per cent of these women lived in Africa and Asia.
Put another way, a woman in Africa has a lifetime risk of one in 16 of dying from pregnancy-related complications. In the industrialized world, it is one in 4,000.”

Plett continued to tell the Senate, “The article goes on to say: Chamberlain Froese says that, incredibly, more women and babies have died of pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications in the developing world over the past 25 years than have died of AIDs.

“In Canada we lose 10 mothers a year, but in a country like Uganda, . . . which has the same population as Canada, every year 6,000 mothers die from pregnancy-related complications.”

Later, the article says: “The obstacles, she insists, are not merely medical ones, for maternal mortality is not just a medical issue — it’s a social issue.”

The knowledge that the G8 will turn its attention to the cause that Chamberlain Froese has worked long and hard for only adds to her conviction. As she recently wrote in the National Post: “Not that Harper, or any one person can work miracles. But maybe for the first time this issue will get the political backing from rich Western powers that it so desperately needs.”

More information and Interviews

For more information, including national news video features on Save the Mothers, please visit www.savethemothers.org

To schedule an interview with Dr. Chamberlain Froese:

Contact: Denise Lodde, Save the Mothers media contact
Phone: 905-220-2533 (mobile)
Email: dlodde@savethemothers.org, dlodde@hotmail.com