Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s questions about midwifery. There are communities in the Northwest Territories outside Yellowknife that have had no birthing options for parents. As a result of that, people have to leave their community at their own expense, or distance themselves from their spouse, from perhaps their other children to depart the communities, the regional centres at least three weeks in advance of having a child.
The midwifery services in Hay River, which now the chief positions are staffed which is wonderful news for Hay River because other than midwifery the only other option is to go to Yellowknife or go someplace down south to have a child or baby.
Would midwifery in those communities where there are no other options to have a baby born in the community, would those not be a priority for midwifery services before places like Yellowknife where there are actually existing options? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the challenges we face around midwifery and providing birthing services in communities outside of Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife and Beaufort-Delta, Inuvik in particular, is that we need to make sure the facilities are appropriate, that individuals can receive the proper diagnostic and specialist obstetric or services such as C-section. Most of our communities don’t have the capacity to provide that type of service. So we need to make sure we focus our attention where we can actually provide birthing services.
What we’re talking about now is pushing midwifery services out and supporting community health nurses in the communities so they can provide many aspects of what midwives do, which is a lot of the postnatal and prenatal services, which will actually lead to healthier babies, healthier births and healthier pregnancies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister indicated that the support and supervision and administration for the Midwifery Program across the Northwest Territories would be operated out of Yellowknife.
I’d like to ask the Minister what is the rationalization for having that located in Yellowknife and why could that not also be located in a regional centre where there are already midwifery services which that administrative position would be overseeing. Thank you.
No final decision has been made. We are open to any discussion, but I would say at this time it is envisioned that a territorial program will be based in Yellowknife as this will enable a broader scope of women with certain risk factors to assess midwifery care for at least a portion of their care through the easy access to diagnostic services, specialist obstetrics, as well as for ability for immediate access to C-sections and other emergency procedures if needed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Again I have to ask the question, if all of those services are already available in the territorial capital, the support of other physicians, the ability for emergency surgery, if those are already services available here in Yellowknife to women who are giving birth, does it not make sense and can there be, please, a rationalization for why the focus for midwifery as well needs to be in Yellowknife? Why could that not be outside of Yellowknife, the oversight for that program, where there are no options but to come to the capital?
You’ve already got it all concentrated here in the capital. I still haven’t heard what the rationalization is for having the oversight for this in the capital. Thank you.
As I indicated previously, the territorial model’s primary goal is to support the knowledge and skill capacity of community health nurses through continued interaction and direct clinical support with midwives. This will benefit all NWT communities by raising the standard of community maternity care. This is one of the primary goals of a territorial program. There’s also the secondary benefit of being able to provide some midwifery support to residents of Yellowknife who choose to access those types of services.
The fact is, at the end of the day, if a patient is at risk, if there are any severe concerns about the birth, they will be coming into a community like Yellowknife or Inuvik anyway, even if midwifery services are provided in a community like Fort Smith or Hay River. High-risk patients still come to those two centres. So we need to focus out of where these high-end services exist just in case we do have to bring individuals in. We also want to push out to communities and support community health nurses.
As a territorial program, I think there’s some value for it to be in Yellowknife. It does provide us the opportunity to provide some midwifery services to a large population in Yellowknife as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
