Cannell Lectureship
A highlight of the Annual Clinical Meeting of the SOGC, each year the Cannell Lectureship invites a distinguished speaker from around the world to provide insights and expertise in critical issues related to women’s health.
Dr. Douglas E. Cannell was the sixteenth President of the SOGC and played a key role in influencing residency education.
During the mid 1960’s, Dr. Douglas E. Cannell’s former residents founded a group called the Cannell Club so that SOGC members could meet with Dr. Cannell and socialize with one another at the Annual Clinical Meeting. This club eventually led to the establishment of the Canadian Foundation for Women’s Health, and today, the Cannell Lecture continues to honour Dr. Cannell’s great contribution to the practice of obstetrics and gynaecology and is a highlight of the conference and a focal point for outstanding critical thinking in the field of women’s health.
Dr. Dorothy Shaw, President FIGO was this year's Cannell Lecturer. She spoke on "Preventable Tragedies in Women's Health"
Sexual and reproductive health begin with the life context of the woman. Women make up 70% of people living in poverty, 65% of the world’s illiterate and the majority of young women living with HIV/AIDS. In 2007 we marked the 20th anniversary of Safe Motherhood providing an opportunity to highlight the shameful maternal mortality rates that are globally unchanged over 20 years.
Of all the indicators monitored by the World Health Organization, maternal and neonatal mortality ratios represent the health statistics with the greatest discrepancy between high resource and low-medium resource countries. In September 2007, the United Nations General Assembly finally added a long awaited and critical target to MDG 5 on maternal health - to “Achieve by 2015 universal access to reproductive health”. The indicators include: Contraceptive prevalence rate, adolescent birth rate and unmet need for family planning. Services are not typically geared to young people who form almost half of the world’s population.
Women are also vulnerable to gender-based violations including cultural practices such as sex selection, female genital mutilation, child marriage, discriminatory feeding and education. These are contributors to preventable mortality and morbidity, including obstetric fistula. Legislative policy is a helpful first step in prevention, and is well founded in international human rights.
Cervical cancer is another preventable tragedy increasingly becoming amenable to primary prevention by vaccine and secondary prevention customized to the country. Partnerships are essential in preventing these tragedies and progress is being made. There are exciting developments in low resource settings to share.
