Kampala — YOU do not understand Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese by analysing her character traits. She is one of those few people so consumed by the passion for what they do, which leads to an understanding of who they are.

Take her voice, for instance: Strong, loud, with an urgency which, while it does not report panic, warns you: I have a mission, and I do not have forever to do it. So if we are to talk, let it not take ample time for another mother to die unattended.

Her stature is the other element which says a lot about this Canadian doctor who has sacrificed Western comfort to live among Africa's most wretched.

Froese is trying to show that motherhood is possible without the scare of death. It is this passion which makes her try to "save the mothers" of the developing world, who daily die of preventable conditions like bleeding, prolonged labour, breech births and so on.

"I was linked to Uganda in 1998 by Ugandan doctors who, under the Association of Ugandan Obstetricians, collaborated with their Canadian counterparts to devise means of helping mothers deliver safely," Froese explains.

It is with these people, notably Dr. Florence Mirembe and Dr. Pius Okong, that Froese developed the Save the Mothers (STM) programme.

"It would not make sense for Ugandan mothers to have to listen to some mzungu (White) Canadian on issues regarding motherhood," she justifies the collaboration. So she lets her Ugandan colleagues do most of the fieldwork, meeting and talking to the women. My vision is for young girls, like university-going age, so that they get into motherhood with the right mentality."

The advantage with Uganda, she says, is that the local women have been more receptive and open, something Froese attributes to the HIV/AIDS campaign which swept across the country, teaching people to open up about different issues.

"Elsewhere, like in Yemen, women have been isolated on religious grounds, in mosques men and women do not mingle. So there's no common ground for them," she regrets.

Froese believes that mothers and their babies die in Uganda, just like in other developing societies, because somehow people have come to accept it as normal.

"So we're trying to get them to expect better; to expect different," Froese says. She stresses the issue of expectations which, she says, is central to forcing a change in maternal and infant mortality.

She says in Canada, on the other hand, the death of a mother in labour lets all hell loose. In Uganda, she says, it is surprising that a small, cheap vial which could stop a woman from bleeding to death is inaccessible, yet when the women die, a lot of money is spent on big, expensive funerals.

So the STM programme, including a two-year taught and research master's degree programme, aims at training people who will talk the local mothers into a change of attitude.

"You can be an MP and have public health training; a journalist and have public health skills; a lawyer and know what people should do to stay alive," Froese explains.

Married to Thomas Froese, a journalist, they have three children: Elizabeth, 6; Jonathan, 4 and Hannah, 3. They are all in Uganda, where they have lived for four years.

The family spent five years in Yemen and before they return to Canada, Froese expects that the STM project will be rolled out to the rest of East Africa.

"Uganda will be the training hub, but it will spread elsewhere," Froese says.