[Perspectives] Jemilah Mahmood: Malaysian leadership in planetary health

In 2000, Professor Jemilah Mahmood watched television images of devastating floods in Mozambique as a helicopter rescued a woman giving birth in a tree. As an obstetrician and gynaecologist, the image stayed with her for nearly two decades. In 2019, while visiting clinics established after the floods, a midwife pointed to a young adult and said, “Their mother gave birth in a tree in the last flood.” Mahmood recalls: “It really hit me…we’ve been putting band aids on gaping wounds all these years.