A Doctor's Quest - 2nd Edition by Gretchen Roedde (Paperback)

About the Book

A Doctor's Quest analyzes the slow progress in global maternal health, contrasting the affluence of the few with the precarious plight of the world's poorest.

Book Synopsis

A doctor grapples with the challenges of mother-and-child health in the developing world.

Recounting medical missions in one-third of the forty-five countries in which she has worked for the past thirty years in Africa, Asia, and, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific, Dr. Gretchen Roedde shares the grim reality of world politics and bureaucratic red tape on the front lines as a doctor in mother-and-child health and HIV/AIDS.

This second edition updates the progress in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (RMNCAH), with additional studies in Afghanistan, Laos, South Sudan, and Nigeria. It tells the stories of the hopes of village women struggling to give birth safely, of their often corrupt leaders, and of countries trying to bring evil despots to justice. Roedde analyzes the encouraging momentum in global maternal health while maintaining a focus on equity disparities within and between countries.

Review Quotes

A Doctor's Quest speaks in the voice of birthing women from the rural regions of 15 of the poorest countries around the world. Their tales of bravery in the face of delivering without trained birth attendants and the joys and the complications that occur are the substance of the book. Weave in the public health perspective on interrelated themes of literacy, contraception, health care delivery, rural health work shortage, social disruptions, sexual violence, inefficient health care systems and corruption, and the book becomes a compelling treatise on maternal health.-- "Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine"

This fine book demands, and deserves, slow and appreciative reading.-- "Isabel Huggan, author of Belonging: Home Away from Home"

About the Author

Gretchen Roedde, assistant professor at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, has been a physician in northern Ontario since 1978. Working with Indigenous and marginalized communities, she practises near Lake Temiskaming. She has also worked as a public health doctor in the developing world, specializing in mother-and-child health and HIV/AIDS. Gretchen lives in Haileybury, Ontario.