A doctor grapples with the challenges of mother and child health in the developing world.

Recounting medical missions in half of the thirty countries in which she has worked for the past twenty-five years in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific - from Darfur in Sudan to Papua New Guinea and Bhutan - Dr. Gretchen Roedde shares the grim reality of world politics and bureaucratic red tape on the front lines as a doctor in mother-and-child health and HIV/AIDS.

A Doctors Quest tells the stories of the hopes of village women struggling to give birth safely, their often corrupt leaders, and countries trying to bring evil despots to justice. The book analyzes the slow progress in global maternal health, contrasting the affluence of the few with the precarious hold on survival of the worlds poorest, where economic realities force families to sell young girls into marriage at the age of thirteen to face higher risk of death from early child-bearing.

Gretchen Roedde has worked as a public health doctor in nearly thirty countries in the developing world for the past quarter-century, specializing in mother-and-child health and HIV/AIDS. She worked for the United Nations Population Fund in Ghana and Papua New Guinea to assess and promote progress in maternal health and has also been involved in projects for UNICEF in Botswana, World Vision in Bangladesh, and Rotary International in Malawi. Dr. Roedde lives in Haileybury, Ontario.