Dr Rose McGready tends to a baby and mother in her Myanmar clinic. The acclaimed doctor will speak in Canberra next month to raise funds for her humanitarian work. Photo: Supplied.
More than 30 years ago, Rose McGready packed up her life in Canberra and moved to a place worlds away from the nation’s capital. It was the hardest of places for almost anyone but, for the women of Myanmar, it could be hell on earth.
For this expert in tropical maternal and child health, whose skills are now recognised worldwide, living and working conditions where she was going were the least of her concerns. Dr McGready wanted to use those skills to help women and their children. Just because they lived thousands of kilometres away from health facilities the rest of the world took for granted, she said, was hardly a reason for them to go without.
“I had a mum who believed girls can get an education as much as boys,” Dr McGready said. “She pushed me (gently) and I eventually finished medicine spending some time at ANU in Canberra and Sydney Uni.
“When you get out of Australia, you realise that globally the chance to learn at this high level is a privilege – so I didn’t take it for granted. I had a debt (not a HECS one) of opportunity – it was time to give back.”
And give back she has, in spades.
The Dr Rose McGready Foundation was founded in 2022 as a registered charity to assist her work serving marginalised communities along the Thai-Myanmar border. It operates solely with the support of volunteers.
Dr McGready is recognised as a leading authority on malaria during pregnancy and its effects on fetal development.
Tropical medicine and mother and child health are the main focus of Dr McGready’s and her team’s work, providing care at four permanent clinics and 16 outreach clinics in remote areas of the region. The two busiest clinics, one in Myanmar and one in Thailand, provide antenatal care and safe-birth services for more than 100 women a month.
The permanent clinics have a 24-hour birthing service, delivering about 2000 babies every year.
“In the first six months in the refugee camp, we had a mother of two, seven months pregnant, dying from malaria, and during the days and nights we struggled together, we looked at each other, and we couldn’t speak the same language, we didn’t speak, but her eyes talked – precious life and love,” Dr McGready said.
“Every mum should be able to have a safe place to birth her baby. And a health service that strives to support a healthy pregnancy.”
Asked what triggered her passion for this work when she could have travelled an easier road as a doctor, still helping people but not living so far out on the edge, she said: “Are we born like this or did our parents, neighbours, teachers, friends and events in our lives make us grow a certain way? How do we find our passion, or does it find us? Aren’t we here to help others – isn’t that what gives us human beings meaning?
“We can do that in many different ways. The Thai-Myanmar border isn’t going to suit everyone.
“When our existence is threatened, we learn quickly to focus on what matters to us.
“The threat can be external, like being caught up in a guerrilla attack on the refugee camp, or internal, like a lot of young people today – asking what is it all for? Passion comes through connecting in real life with people and learning they struggle too.”
When Dr McGready arrived in the region, multi-drug-resistant malaria was widespread. Her team has gone from treating more than 100 daily cases of the deadly form of malaria, falciparum, in a single clinic to zero cases, to none in the past six years in the same clinic. Her work has been so successful that the World Health Organisation has adopted her findings for treating malaria in pregnancy.
Despite her success in the field, Dr McGready runs her clinics on donations, well aware that more people today have less to donate to even the best of causes.
“The thing is that we have a choice, in this moment and all the little moments that we are never going to get back,” she said.
”We can appreciate what we have: a roof over our heads, running water, enough food on the table, a school for the kids, a health system that will provide for you, and we can choose to share some of this richness, in this moment.”
Professor Rose McGready will be in conversation with Virginia Haussegger AM at Merici College Canberra on Thursday, 8 May, from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. To book, visit the website.
