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What about Midwives?
Blog posts reflect the views of their authors.
Whether promising to recruit and retain more doctors or vilifying administrators as public fund leeches all three parties are attempting to get above the fold with their health care promises. Though details differ the message is the same – deliver more for less. And who doesn’t want more for less?
No party seems to know that there’s a program in Nova Scotia that does just that: midwifery care. While this is symptomatic of Nova Scotia’s approach to health care being overly focused on doctors, that’s an issue for another day. Today my axe to grind is that all parties are ignoring an incredible program that not only alleviates stress on the health care system but offers world class care to Nova Scotians.
Although it offers significant cost savings as compared to obstetrical care midwifery receives no mention in any party platform. Despite offering unparalleled continuity of care to mums and babes midwifery has yet to slip from the lips of any party leader. Even though midwives offer women the option to give birth at home – keeping people out of hospitals, opening beds, and saving money – midwifery has yet to appear even as a fringe election issue.
Midwives are trained health professionals. Midwives are incredible at what they do. They specialize in and are undisputed experts at normal birth.
Midwives believe in and practice continuity of care – the midwives at your prenatal appointments will be the midwives at your birth and the midwives doing your follow up visits. Midwives believe in and practice informed choice – your midwife will present care options but choice of care remains yours and is respected.
What’s more a 2013 study found midwife led care to lead to the best health care outcomes for both baby and mom.
In 1994 Ontario regulated and covered midwifery services, it has since taken off and by 2010 midwives were attending 10% of births in that province. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have successfully introduced and integrated midwifery care (and benefited from its associated savings).
Nova Scotia regulated midwifery in 2009. It has been struggling to get off the ground ever since.
Midwifery services are offered by the South Shore District Health Authority, the Guysborough Antigonish Strait Health Authority, and the IWK. They are, however, offered on such a limited scale that their benefits have yet to be realized.
That midwifery services remain in Nova Scotia at all is a testament to the incredible dedication of those midwives who continue to persevere in the face of insufferable government intransigence.
Under the current model of care midwives are employed by health authorities. When health authorities don’t hire midwifery doesn’t expand. And health authorities won’t hire without provincial funding.
So as long as it’s election time and every prospective premier is out announcing funding promises I’d like to see some for midwifery.
And if any prospective party leader is reading this take note – while midwifery may not be an issue that attracts every voter those who are committed to it are committed! So much so that they have travelled and moved out of province to receive care. To put it bluntly – there are votes in this.
Beyond Machiavellian calculations of votes though, expanding midwifery care in Nova Scotia is just plain good policy.
Midwives are good for keeping people out of hospital. Midwives are good for rural Nova Scotia where hospitals are miles away. Midwives are good for urban Nova Scotia where hospitals are overcrowded. Midwives are good for the Nova Scotia’s bottom line. Midwives are good for Nova Scotia’s babies. And midwives are good for Nova Scotia’s mums.
Midwives are good for Nova Scotia!
So please, let’s hear something about midwives.
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Comments
Where do we draw the line on government intervention
Submitted by TheUncivilized on Thu, 09/26/2013 - 20:23.
How did midwifery nearly disappear in the first place?
Taxes, which fund the health care system, don't take into consideration personal choice and rely on the threat of force, implied by taxation laws, to coerce human beings out of the products of their labor, when they would rather not pay for a service they don't plan to use or don't want or wouldn't contract for. Diverting money that would fund a sector of the economy a needed part of the economy and of heritage.
As a consumer, you vote with your dollars for what you want to see more of. If a human being wants to see more midwives, as is the case in most countries where the idea exists, then money will flow in that direction, and business will grow. If, however, the combined might of multiple monopolies of science, technology, media, and education collude and convinces a public that midwives and all other traditional medicines, are outdated, backwater, non-percise, dark age forms of voodoo, something must fill the void, because nature abhors a vaccum. Enter big business and the state.
I cannot stress enough the role played by the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon and Ford Foundations in fomenting angst against traditional medicine of all sorts, naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncture, herbal medicine, midwifery, ect, in the early part of the 20th century. See the Flexner Report (found here), Lily E. Kay's The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (Oxford University Press, 1993) a review of which can be found here with a great summary, as well as Rockefeller medicine men : medicine and capitalism in America by E Richard Brown. Notice who still controls most of the compulsory education system, University Funding structures, the medical hospital research facilities and pharmaceutical companies ... The big Tax Exempt Foundations along with their associated banks. Notice that those groups of people who are exempt from taxation are the ones prospering and succeeding. Notice that their mode of operation is monopoly and insulation against competition. Notice that their execution of that operation take the form of infiltration and influence into government structures.
The same foundations and their respective families were key in many other shady dealings, such as: Adoption Trains, Planned Parenthood (aka the american eugenics society and its, now, international appendages), the compulsory education system, teachers pensions, The Federal Reserve System and its PetroDollar status, World War 1 and 2, the Funding of the Cold War, the funding of Hitler and the NAZI party, the funding of the Bolshevic coup of the Workers Revolution in Petrograd and soooo much more. For more insite here I recommend the books: Tragedy and Hope by Prof. Carroll Quigley, Western technology and Soviet economic development by Prof. Anthony Sutton, and All books by John taylor Gatto as well as his 5 hour interview called "The Ultimate History Lesson" (video)(audio with commentary)
To sum up, it is your choice where and how you give birth to a child, Hmong women traditionally gave birth standing up in their living rooms, if you so choose you should be able to go to a hospital (admittedly the dirtiest place in any city, where all the sick people go and the dying rot away) to give birth as your understanding of this natural process dictates. But at the very least, allow others the same choice you had in deciding what is a safe and stress free environment for you to give birth in.
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