BBC’s Lyse Doucet Honored with Prestigious David Bloom Award

BBC News correspondent Lyse Doucet has been awarded the prestigious David Bloom Award for this gripping report on maternal mortality in Afghanistan, Where Giving Life is a Death Sentence. The announcement was made Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at the 66th Annual Radio Television Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Convention Center attended by Vice President Joe Biden.

In the report, which aired on BBC World News America on October 27, 2009, the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, traveled to Badakshan province, in northeast Afghanistan, to report from the part of the world with the worst-ever recorded rate of maternal mortality. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, some international aid has reached this remote area to build clinics and train midwives, but the statistics for maternal mortality remain grim.

Lyse Doucet is an anchor and correspondent for both BBC World Service radio and BBC World News, the BBC’s global news channel. She is often deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field and frequently interviews world leaders. Some of her recent assignments have included covering the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma in May 2008 and reporting the South Asia earthquake in 2005 as well as extensive coverage of the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Lyse was born in eastern Canada, in Bathurst, New Brunswick.

BBC World News America airs weeknights at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on BBC AMERICA and BBC World News. 

Watch the report below: