Indigenous Canadians deserve access to quality healthcare
post
What the hell do you do, build and staff hospitals in every backwater of the second largest country in the world? How do you staff it? We're an hour and a bit out of a city of 1M and we still have to get doctors to travel from the city to run the clinics and there's no birthing clinic because of it.
You staff it by making it easier for the local kids who are interested to get medical training. In remote areas, they're the most likely to come back and stay. They don't all have to be doctors, either. Midwives help. Nursing stations help.
And then when they're trained, they stay in the cities because that's where the money is, and the creature comforts.
I think you would be surprised. Look at the (admittedly short, since it's a young institution) track record of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and where its graduates end up, for instance. Not every one of them becomes a GP serving in a rural or remote community, but a good percentage graduate with the intention of making that their career. I can't see why similar efforts elsewhere wouldn't work.
In terms of birth rates, FN are ahead of every other local demographic (local as in 'Canadian'). They're the only local demographic that's actually growing, by quite a bit, while all the others are below sustainability. I can appreciate that this is an issue. But in terms of funding and equity, I don't see why we, as a tax-base, should be dedicating more funding and money to a demo that's already 'advantaged' in this regard.
Anyone who lives in a super remote location, is giving up various amenities that city-dwellers enjoy. And city-dwellers enjoy those amenities because there are enough people around to support those amenities / services. Rankin Inlet has a population of 2700. The largest city in Nunavut has less than 10k people, and is an equal pain in the ass to get to as Winnipeg -- so she'd likely need to travel no matter what with that setup, even if there was something 'closer' that had additional facilities to provide care for problematic births, it's still 'you're in a hotel room outside your normal community giving birth'. If you want more amenities, encourage more colonials to come north, get the populations up to support more advanced facilities/amenities, rather than dumping on them routinely, impeding development, and aiming to setup racially segregated systems. Change the conversation from "FN are so hard done by, even though they're the only demo that's actually growing in Canada!" to "We need more infrastructure for everyone in the northern regions of the country, we want more people to migrate north and to diversify from the 49th parallel".
all 11 comments