By Ganga Jolicoeur
Women and families in and around 100 Mile House are experiencing a widening gap in maternity care services due to a growing shortage of maternity care providers.
Women and families in rural, northern and First Nations communities often travel hundreds of kilometres to access maternity care, resulting in elevated health risks, poorer outcomes for mothers and newborns, and unnecessarily higher costs all around.
To close the maternity care gap, the Midwives Association of British Columbia (MABC) has put forward a new vision for midwifery and maternity care in B.C.
Our new vision is about fully integrating midwifery into our health-care system and hospitals and supporting midwives to assist in the delivery of 35 per cent of the births in B.C. by 2020 in order to increase access to maternity care, improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs.
Our vision involves providing women greater choice in their maternity care provider, reducing the rate of caesareans and improving access to First Nations maternity care.
At the same time, our vision aims to reduce pressure on family physicians in rural communities, while making better use of British Columbian’s health-care dollars.
While awareness of midwifery as a safe and recognized maternity care choice has increased, the profession’s growth has not kept pace with demand. More and more women are recognizing that B.C.’s registered midwives are highly trained, educated and regulated professionals who are experts in pregnancy, low-risk birth and post natal care.
Midwives are covered by MSP and practise in clinics, hospitals and homes and offer a full range of prenatal tests, screening and diagnosis options, ultrasound imaging and access to a variety of comfort and pain-relief options during labour.
B.C.’s registered midwives often work collaboratively with family physicians and with obstetricians, paediatricians, nurses and nurse practitioners to ensure all of a mother’s or baby’s medical needs are met.
The MABC’s recommendations include increasing the number of midwives in B.C. by 16 per year, enabling internationally-trained midwives to practice in the province, new supports for midwives in rural and northern communities, and new policies to enable midwives to work to their full capacity, among others.
Our recommendations build on the positive steps taken by the provincial government, which provided resources to support home births and funding to double the number of graduating midwives at the University of B.C. from 10 to 20 by 2017.
B.C.’s registered midwives hope our vision will begin a new dialogue to foster collaborative action between the provincial government, its agencies and other maternity care providers, so together we can bridge the gap in maternity care services.
By working together we can create better access to maternity care in communities, such as 100 Mile House, Williams Lake and others.
The present and future health of B.C.’s women, newborns and families offers a compelling reason to begin this important dialogue now.
Ganga Jolicoeur is the Midwives Association of BC executive director.
