This Thursday we are inviting women from all parts of our community to join us in celebrating International Women's Day.
As one of only two specialist women’s trusts in the UK and the largest women’s hospital of its kind in Europe, we want to mark this day when people all over the world are recognising the important role that women play in society.
There will be lots of fun events - women definitely know how to have fun! - including female choirs and the only all-girl Beatles tribute band in the UK, the Beatelles, along with Zumba and Hula Hoop taster sessions. There will also be market stalls provided by representatives of many local women’s and ethnic minority support groups to promote the services they provide. So why not come along between 10am and 4pm?
We will also be featuring information about childbirth around the world in which we are trying to make a difference. For while we welcome women from all parts of the world to our hospital we also reach out to women overseas with projects like our partnership with the largest maternity unit in Uganda at Mulago hospital.
Through an exchange of staff including midwives and doctors, people from our trust have helped establish a basic but vital high dependency unit at Mulago. Our staff have also helped provide funds for crucial equipment for women in labour such as blood pressure monitors and equipment to monitor babies' heartbeats during labour - things we take for granted here but without which life threatening conditions such as pre-eclampsia may not be detected.
On International Women's Day I will also be proud that the new Sanyu Research Unit for International Maternal and Child Health, has recently been set up here at Liverpool Women’s in partnership with the University of Liverpool. This is dedicated to improving maternal and neonatal health in low resource settings through research here in Liverpool and in a hands-on setting in countries including Uganda, Malawi, Pakistan and India.
Research at the Sanyu Centre, named after a Ugandan woman called Edith Sanyu who tragically died in labour because she did not reach hospital in time, will seek to identify appropriate treatment for women in more basic settings and help to save lives.
The word Sanyu means hope - which is something we want to give to the thousands of women like Edith who die unnecessarily in resource poor settings and to women in our own hospital, be it treatment for mental health problems in pregnancy, helping women who have suffered multiple miscarriage to have a baby or those keeping watch at the side of an incubator on our Neonatal Unit.