Mailman School Hosts Special PBS Film Screening & Panel Discussion

"Birth of a Surgeon"

Film airs July 15 on Wide Angle, the foreign affairs documentary series airing nationally on PBS.

More than half a million women die in pregnancy and childbirth every year. Half of those are in sub-Saharan Africa where the lifetime risk of maternal mortality is 1 in 15. Wide Angle travels to Mozambique where bold grassroots programs have cut the maternal death rate in half and the latest unconventional initiative is training midwives in advanced life-saving surgery. The documentary profiles student Emilia Cumbane as she learns to treat the life-threatening complications pregnant women encounter. Cumbane becomes one of the first midwives in the world granted the right to perform surgery and performs her first life-saving Caesarian section by herself - illustrating how one woman can make a difference on the frontlines of public health in Africa. The program in Mozambique is being hailed as a model solution offering new hope to resource-poor countries worldwide.

Panelists:

Lynn Freedman, JD, MPH, director of the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) Program and professor of clinical Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health

Helen de Pinho, MD, MBA, AMDD, program officer and assistant professor of clinical Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health

Erin Chapman, Coordinating Producer/Wide Angle, Thirteen/WNET New York

Welcome and Introduction by: Andrew Davidson, PhD, Executive Vice Dean, Mailman School of Public Health

More information to follow soon. For questions, please contact Anne Foulke at (212) 342-5312, or via email at af2231@columbia.edu.

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