Professor Stephen Tong from the Mercy Hospital for Women in Heidelberg has been honoured at the Catholic Health Australia (CHA) Awards in Sydney and named CHA Emerging Leader 2016. 

We would like to offer our congratulations and send a thank you to Professor Tong and his team for his hard work and dedication to women and their unborn babies.

Professor Tong works as a specialist obstetrician at Mercy Hospital for Women in Heidelberg. He uses cutting edged, evidence-based practice to provide support and innovative treatment caring for pregnant women and their babies. Professor Tong also leads an internationally recognised research program working in particular, to ensuring better outcomes in high-risk pregnancies. 

This important work demonstrates a real and practical way to support women and families facing difficult pregnancies and diagnoses. Professor Tong states that he hopes that his team will be able to: “make discoveries that will lead to safer care for pregnancies challenged with major complications such as fetal growth restriction, preeclampsia and ectopic pregnancy.’

Professor Tong and his team work in three streams of laboratory studies: therapeutics for ectopic pregnancy and pre-eclampsia, and non-invasive biomarkers for pregnancy complications. His group has also developed a potential non-invasive biomarker test to identify fetuses’ critically hypoxic in utero and in danger of stillbirth. Professor Tong has published 85-100 peer-reviewed publications including in The Lancet and Nature.

Speaking on his award, Chief Executive of Health Services at Mercy Health, Linda Mellors, stated: ‘Professor Tong is a leader of vision, wisdom and integrity who contributes widely and generously to the hospital, as well as the international scientific community.’

Please join us in thanking Professor Tong for his important work in support women and their unborn children through vulnerable pregnancies. We need to continue to support and encourage the great innovation and dedication of people like Professor Tong who work to ensure better outcomes for women and their babies into the future.

We will send this petition to Professor Tong together with all who have signed it at the end of next week.