Dr. Thomas Burke of Massachusetts General Hospital speaks Tuesday night about the importance of global maternal health and the role of men in the field. Burke, also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, followed his lecture with a student discussion group.
Thomas F. Burke, the chief of the Division of Global Health and Human Rights at Massachusetts General Hospital, argued that the greatest inequality on earth is health care for women in poor countries during a talk at Ticknor Lounge on Tuesday.
Burke spoke to a crowd of about 30 students on the importance of men’s roles in women’s health during the presentation, which was advertised as “Be a Man in Maternal Health.”
The event was chiefly organized by the Harvard Undergraduate Maternal Health Initiative and was co-sponsored by the Sigma Chi and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternities, the South Asian Men's Collective, Asian American Brotherhood, Black Men's Forum, and Harvard University Global Health Forum.
During his presentation, Burke argued that significant inequities remained between women in affluent nations and women in poorer nations. He said that girls in certain underprivileged nations statistically face a one-in-six chance of dying of pregnancy-related causes in their lifetimes, whereas the corresponding statistic in the United States is one-in-18,000.
Burke also explained some of the ways in which his division at MGH has been involved in tackling maternal health issues in less privileged nations. According to Burke, 2.6 million women are disabled every year by postpartum hemorrhage.
“These are all preventable deaths, and they almost all happen in poor women,” Burke said.
To tackle the widespread effects of postpartum hemorrhage, Burke said his department has been involved in creating a low-cost solution, a reusable Uterine Balloon Tamponade treatment that can be offered at a cost of $4.85 per unit in underprivileged nations.
