Global Scalpels | Episode 9: Dr Jean Christophe

Every day 830 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes – that is over 330,000 per year. That is 830 mothers. 830 sisters. 830 wives. Lives lost, and families shattered. Sometimes these deaths come as a result of surgical complications, other times due to unsanitary conditions or infection, and still more due to severe bleeding that could easily be prevented if they had adequate access to healthcare. In addition to these 330,000 women, another 5.8 million die due to trauma related causes such as road traffic accidents. This is more than the total number of deaths that result from malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined!

What do these two major topics have in common? While mortality may seem to be an obvious answer, this is too far down the line. Prevention. Many of these deaths are completely preventable. Join us as we talk about the role of public health in tandem with surgical care and how surgeons and non-surgeons alike can help to advocate for better public health measures to prevent these deaths from occurring, rather than having to work with the ugly aftermath of a traumatic injury in the operating room. In this episode, we challenge the paradigm that surgical care only takes place behind closed doors and sterile drapes. It can also take place on the steps of the legislative government building through advocating for safer traffic laws or funding for family planning education.

Dr Jean Christophe: Johns Hopkins Sommer Scholar, Awardee of the 120 Under 40, and Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute

RWANDA

“Family Planning, Public Health, Road Traffic Safety, and Being Part of the Solution”

Dr Jean Christophe trained as both a medical doctor as well as a public health professional. He is currently a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He leads the demographic dividend work of the institute and co-chairs the international conference on family planning that happens every two years bringing together more than 4000 professionals working in the domain of family planning and population health.

In the past, he has worked as a clinician in different hospitals in Rwanda before joining Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to pursue his Master of Public Health as a Sommer Scholar. He is one of the first 40 awardees of the 120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders, recognizing his public health practice work through the Healthy People Rwanda, a local non-profit that he founded, as well as the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning that he co-founded.

His current work focuses on promoting evidence-based public health practice and youth leadership for family planning and reproductive health in the developing world particularly the integration of men in family planning and demographic dividend in public health planning and practice.