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Manitoba woman loses baby after waiting for flight medevac

When a woman in northern Manitoba suffered serious pregnancy complications, she had to wait hours for emergency help while quick medical intervention could save her baby’s life.

“My boyfriend [saw] his leg was sticking out,” Adrienne Menow told CTVNews. “I don’t feel important.”

Menow is sounding the alarm about the lack of emergency medical resources in Indigenous communities like the Norwegian House Cree Nation. With her baby in the breech, Menow needed immediate help, but spent hours in labor in a room at Norwegian House hospital until a flight could take her north to a better equipped facility in the city of Thompson, Man.

When she finally arrived at the hospital there, she knew that the son she named Jasper would not make it.

“[The] The baby was born within four minutes of my arrival at the hospital,” Menow said. “But he was stillborn at birth.”

In the northern First Nations, where emergency responses can take hours instead of minutes, people have long called for better medical services and facilities.

Not far away in Pimicikamak Cree Nation, a nursing station that is said to have 12 primary care nurses a day has had an average of seven nurses on duty since last summer, according to information obtained by CTV News.

Two new medical centers are under construction in the area. At a cost of $180 million, the facilities will provide dialysis and palliative care at Norwegian House, emergency room and outpatient care at Pimicikamak.

“The population we have in the community is 8,000 people, and that’s 2,000 people outside the reserve,” Pimicikamak Cree Nation Deputy Director Ivan Monias told CTV News. “The facility is almost done. Our concern is that we have to fill it with doctors, nurses and doctors.”

Indigenous Services Canada said staff from existing facilities will be moved to the new ones and the final number of staff for both new health centers “has yet to be determined.”

The Norwegian Home Medical Center is scheduled to open this summer. The federal government says antenatal services will be available, but did not mention the delivery unit.

Still traumatized by his experience, Menow is skeptical that things will improve.

“I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” Menow said.



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