Second Blue Jean Ball Rolls Around for 2009

Blue Jean Ball

Published February 10, 2009, last updated on March 8, 2013

The 2nd-annual Blue Jean Ball benefiting the Duke Global Women’s Health Initiative will start at 6 p.m. Feb. 28 at the Hilton on Hilsborough Road.

The evening begins with a silent auction open to the public. Auction items include weekend get away packages, jewelry, pottery, art, furniture, spa certificates, sports memorabilia, and much more.

Dinner and dancing starts at 9 p.m. Tickets (required for dinner) are $100 each.

For more details about the event call 660-2378 or visit http://bluejeanball.mc.duke.edu

Blue Jean Ball supports the initiative in Tanzania

Jeffrey Wilkinson, M.D., assistant professor of OB/GYN at Duke, knew that he wanted to help people in low resource settings deal with serious maternal complications. Last year, he was given a unique opportunity to do just that.

Wilkinson shared his interest in helping other women with his colleagues at Duke and a group of supporters quickly formed to help develop an event to raise funding for his cause.

The first Blue Jean Ball, held last February, raised more than $40,000; this year’s event has a goal of $100,000.

With the support of the fundraising and the Duke Global Health Institute, Wilkinson, and his wife, Sumera Hayat, M.D., a Duke family physician, made a commitment to travel, along with their two children, to Africa to help develop programs designed to reduce maternal health problems.

As a result in 2008, a formal collaboration to improve maternal-child health care was established between Duke University and Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC.)

KCMC is located in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Moshi, Tanzania. It is the largest hospital in Northern Tanzania, with 450 inpatient beds and 500 daily outpatient visits. KCMC is a national teaching hospital for medical students, nurses and other allied health professionals.

The collaboration, Women’s Reproductive Health Program, comprises a team responsible for advancing numerous efforts that focus on the reduction of maternal death and childbirth-related injuries, as well as improvements in the overall health of women in low-resource communities. The team is working on this goal through a combination of community and medical education, research and direct patient care.

Wilkinson; Brandi Vasquez, M.D., Duke Global Health resident; and Olola Oneka, M.D., chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at KCMC, are working in Tanzania on improving access to care for women who have sustained birth-related injuries.

Each year, more than 500,000 women die in childbirth, mostly in developing countries. In addition, more than 2 million women in Third World countries live with obstetric fistula, a devastating injury related to childbirth that can result in unrelenting urine/bowel leakage. Women with fistula are often ostracized by their communities.

The team is expanding the services offered at KCMC to include a surgical clinic where patients are screened for type and severity of injury and the appropriate surgical repair is identified and performed.

Hayat, Vasquez and Oneko are finalizing plans to assist KCMC’s ongoing efforts in cervical cancer prevention, screening and treatment.

Mary Hartman, M.D., associate professor in pediatrics, and Peter Michelson, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics, along with Janet Fields, nurse midwife, recently traveled to Tanzania to help teach neonatal resuscitation and emergency obstetrics to all of the obstetric providers at KCMC hospital.

Read more about the initiative in Tanzania on Wilkinson’s blog.

Originally published in Inside Duke Medicine, View the original article.

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