Outsourcing births

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Part of the reason a birth centre was so important to Arviat was the high birth rate. Is the rate itself a concern in the community?
It is, and was discussed with the midwives. There was interest in having some family planning work going on in the community and work with the high schools. It’s another area of public health where they were willing to do some basic things on sexual health that were beyond the scope of the birthing centre. Those are the sorts of opportunities that were lost.

Looking forward – do you still hope that the centre will open one day?
We do. We were told that there was a plan for rolling out the birthing centres that will dot them all over Nunavut, and after they’re all open they’ll come back to Arviat. People were very excited they finally had the midwives, but kept waiting for the actual centre, we were going to have a big opening and community celebration, but it kept getting delayed and never happened. We still can’t open it because of renovations. But even though they [the midwives] came in a low-key way, the people involved in the program were very positive in the community. There were spin-off nutrition programs in the school; they worked alongside the Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program. They fit into places where they would have an audience in existing programs. It was a real community based approach.

Arviat health advocates wrote to their Minister of Health and were told the birthing centre and another midwifery training program would be looked at in 2011. Check back at www.cwhn.ca for updates.

Signy Gerrard is the Director of Communications at the Canadian Women’s Health Network.