TORONTO, Ontario–(CANADIAN CHRISTIAN NEWS SERVICE)–SIM Canada is pleased to announce that Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, SIM missionary and founder and executive director of Save the Mothers, has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada, one of Canada’s highest civilian awards. An investiture ceremony will be held at Rideau Hall at a later date.
Dr. Jean, as she is known to her patients in East Africa, is an internationally recognized expert in women’s reproductive health. She has volunteered in some of the world’s poorest countries, particularly Uganda, to make childbirth a safer experience.
Chamberlain Froese is one of Canada’s best-known medical missionaries and joined SIM’s family of Canadians working around the world in the service of the Gospel in June 2012.
Save the Mothers is an organization dedicated to saving some of the 287,000 women who die in childbirth annually.
“We were grateful and thrilled when Dr. Chamberlain Froese and her family joined us as members with SIM Canada. We’ve always recognized that she and her work were incredibly valuable to SIM and to countless mothers and babies around the world,” says John Denbok, Executive Director of SIM Canada. “To have our country recognize her powerful contribution to the issue of maternal health is a wonderful honour to both Chamberlain Froese and to SIM. We congratulate her. We are very proud.”
“Maternal mortality is preventable. It is the most tolerated tragedy of the 21st Century,” said Dr. Chamberlain Froese. “But I have been grateful for the support of the Canadian government in recent years, and for the many global citizens who are joining their voices to help save the lives of mothers and their babies.”
“I still have much to do,” she added. “May God help us all to continue the work, until no mother or her child dies of preventable complications related to pregnancy, regardless of their geography or resources.”
Dr. Chamberlain Froese spends eight months of the year in Uganda and four months in Canada advocating for safe motherhood, while teaching and working clinically. She is an Associate Professor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at McMaster University and an adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo (School of Public Health).
She has written a book, Where Have All the Mothers Gone and is co-editor of the book Women’s Health in the Majority World: Issues and Initiatives, which is soon to be released in its second edition.
SIM Canada is a community of God’s people who delight to worship him and are passionate about the Gospel, seeking to fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ in the world. SIM Canada’s mission is to glorify God by planting, strengthening, and partnering with churches around the world as we evangelize the unreached; minister to human need; disciple believers into churches, and equip churches to fulfill Christ’s commission.
Established in 1967 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Order of Canada recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation. Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese is the first SIM missionary to receive the Order of Canada.
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For more information or interviews:
Contact: John Denbok
Website: www.sim.ca
Email: John.Denbok@sim.org
Phone: 416-497-2424