Maternal mortality in Rural Africa

Filmmaker, doctor honoured for documentary

Filmmaker, doctor honoured for documentary
Jessica Laws/For The Intelligencer
Monday, April 6, 2015 2:45:20 EDT PM
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Two local childhood friends were one of the winners awarded at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference Film Festival.
Ottawa doctor, global health researcher and Belleville native Dr. Gail Webber and Belleville filmmaker Doug Knutson of Windswept Productions spent a month in Tanzania in 2012 making the short documentary “Saving Mothers: Preventing Maternal Mortality in Rural Africa.”

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African plight hits home

African plight hits home
By Jason Miller, The Intelligencer
Posted 10 days ago

A Belleville filmmaker and an Ottawa physician recently teamed up to capture the plight of Tanzania women who died during childbirth.
Dr. Gail Webber, a Belleville native now residing in Ottawa, is behind a project aimed at providing the crucial medication required to save the lives of hundreds of women living in remote parts of the African country.
Webber and filmmaker Doug Knutson brought their campaign to Victoria Avenue Baptist Church, Sunday, showcasing video evidence of their recent trip to Sharati Tanzania, an isolated community where dozens of women die yearly due to PPH (post partum haemorrhage - bleeding after childbirth).
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In search of good ideas

In search of good ideas
by Elizabeth Payne, Ottawa Citizen

As a family physician with a PhD in population health, Ottawa’s Gail Webber is used to tackling challenges, big and small. But creating a two-minute video to explain why her idea to save mothers in rural Africa deserves federal research funding was a new challenge and one that took her outside her comfort zone. As did the fact that the public was invited to vote on the video.
(CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO)
It’s all part of a new approach to foreign aid that considers public engagement — and how convincingly scientists can make their cases to taxpayers — a factor in deciding how to distribute development dollars.
“Please vote for this bold idea,” says Webber, dressed in surgical scrubs for the video, after explaining that women in rural Tanzania have a one-in-23 risk of dying during childbirth. “These women and their families deserve a better chance at survival.”
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