Prof Rose McGready, a doctor of more than 30 years, has dedicated her life to caring for marginalised people on the Thai-Myanmar border.

“We have different talents, different ways to give and I think I found mine,” says the graduate of Merici College.

“If we all do our bit to help, the world gets better.”

Prof McGready is returning to Canberra on May 8 to give a public talk about her life-saving mission. 

Initially interested in working in sports medicine, Prof McGready says her perspective changed after she began studying at the University of Sydney.

Four years later, in 1994, she visited Thailand as a six-month volunteer at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) to work with tropical medicine and obstetrics, and was inspired to stay. 

“If [working in tropical diseases] wasn’t important to me, I wouldn’t have stayed at it for more than 30 years,” the now Professor of Tropical Maternal and Child Health at Oxford University and deputy director and head of Maternal and Child Health at the SMRU says. 

“That doesn’t mean there haven’t been times when I’ve wanted to quit.

“When things didn’t go well [we saw] mothers, babies, children and young men die; or worse, when we had to decide we couldn’t help [due to no money].

“In your mind, you know that in Australia, they could’ve been helped.”

Prof McGready has treated more than 20,000 pregnant women with malaria and says the larger issue is the damage on a fetus that isn’t visible to the eye. 

“Mum’s can have abortions and severe anaemia, or premature birth,” she says. 

“The fetus doesn’t grow well and these babies that are born too small inherit an intergenerational effect putting them at greater risk of diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes if they reach adulthood.”

While most Australians know about malaria because it gets mentioned in travel medicine clinics, what is less known is that it is the most deadly parasitic disease globally. 

“If we just fix the malaria and don’t help mums have a safe birth, they can die from haemorrhage at home because they can’t reach care on time,” says Prof McGready. 

“Our research looks at the bundle of essential needs and what is effective and affordable.” 

Amid one of the world’s longest running refugee crises, healthcare in Myanmar has consistently been ranked as poor by international standards. 

Prof McGready’s work on malaria has seen the complete eradication of the disease in one of her clinics for the past six years, although she says the conflict in Myanmar makes her nervous. 

“The last three years in Myanmar sends us backwards,” she says. 

“The work on elimination was driven by drug resistance and if it re-explodes, we face untreatable malaria which means more deaths.” 

Prof McGready, alongside a team of volunteers, manages four clinics. Two on each side of the Myanmar and Thai borders. 

Two of the busiest clinics (one on each side), provides antenatal care and safe birth services for more than 100 women each month. The permanent clinics have a 24-hour birthing service that delivers around 2000 babies a year. 

The SMRU’s work has been recognised and adopted by the World Health Organization for the treatment of malaria in pregnancy, and Prof McGready’s research and practices are routinely used in Africa and wherever malaria is present. 

In 2022, the Dr Rose McGready Foundation (DRMF) was established as a registered charity to support Prof McGready’s lifesaving work on the border, something she says was both a surprise and a humbling experience. 

“I never expected or envisaged that school and uni friends I had not had the pleasure to see for decades would remember me, or dare to put in the gutsy volunteer work, to create DRMF,” she says.

Prof McGready will give a talk at Merici College on her work at 5.30pm, May 8. All proceeds go towards the DRMF. Book at drrosemcgreadyfoundation.org.au.