Canadian doctor wins prestigious award for risking self, helping others
HALIFAX, NS—Jean Chamberlain Froese, an obstetrician gynecologist and the founder and executive director of Save The Mothers, has been chosen by The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada to receive a prestigious award.
The Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award acknowledges and celebrates Canadian physicians worldwide who go beyond the accepted norms of routine practice in providing health care or emergency medical services, and may include exposure to personal risk.
The award will be presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada in Halifax in June, and includes a $5,000 donation to the charity of Chamberlain Froese's choice. Chamberlain Froese says she will give the money to Save The Mothers, an international Christian ministry she created to promote the health and dignity of mothers in developing countries.
"I truly feel blessed to have such a great team of people around me," says Chamberlain Froese. "Any award given is an award for the entire team that is working together to save the mothers of Uganda and East Africa."
Chamberlain Froese has been "exposed to significant risk in her work," wrote Patrick Mohide, president of the Association of Professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Canada in his letter nominating Chamberlain-Froese for the award. Mohide described her as, "an extraordinarily dedicated and deeply religious person," whose "commitment is not just commendable but really awesome."
"She has a deep and abiding passion for what she does," Mohide added. "She has an aura about her of goodness and commitment."
Through Save The Mothers Chamberlain Froese created a Masters Degree program at Uganda Christian University, which is engaging local leadership to equip them to bring about change in the arena of women's health care.
During a telephone interview with ChristianWeek from Uganda, Chamberlain Froese said the program is going well. "We've just built a new training centre focused on the Save The Mothers program. So now we've got a facility where we can bring people in from the outside, and we're actually recruiting Kenyan students," she said.
The humanitarian award is named in honour of Lucille Teasdale and Piero Corti, a physician couple who devoted their professional careers to healing, teaching and improving the condition of the population residing in the Gulu region of Uganda. For 35 years, they served in the region, enduring frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, providing medical care in spite of Ugandan civil war and unrest. Teasdale died of AIDS in 1996, after contracting HIV while working.
For more information visit www.savethemothers.org.
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