Almost one in four women in Newfoundland and
Isn't that strange? That women who live on the East Coast of Canada have suddenly developed a problem giving birth vaginally? Or that women in Quebec have strangely lost their ability to push their babies out without help of a vacuum or salad tongs? How could this be? Is it the water? Maybe something in the air that they breathe? Or could it be that doctors and hospitals in those areas are more scissor happy than in other areas of Canada? hmmmmmmm....
Personally I like the part of the article where the SOGC, concerned by the increasing rate of cesarean sections, has launched a plan to reduce the incidence of unnecessary surgery, with mixed results.“We have some good guidelines but there is no money for implementation,”
ARE they freakin' joking?! No money to implement guidelines that will save hundreds of thousands of women from needless surgical deliveries, and save multitudes of babies from suffering respiratory distress and other life threatening problems due to the over used of medical interventions like epidurals, inductions and caesarean sections?! No money to implement a set of guidelines that by lowering the surgical birth rate would effective cut the cost of giving birth by at least 50%?!? HELLO!? Is there a mathematician in the house?
*insert smiley banging head against a brick wall*
Almost one in four women in Newfoundland andHERE to read the entire article at the Globe & MailLabrador deliver their babies by C-section, compared with only one in 20 in Nunavut, newly released data show.
Similarly, the percentage of women getting an epidural during delivery is three times higher in Quebec than in the Yukon, and there are 2 1/2 times as many “assisted births” (involving forceps or vacuum extraction) in Alberta than in Prince Edward Island.
These are just a few striking examples of how the medical procedures women are subjected to during childbirth vary markedly between regions.
“The bottom line is that there are a lot of obstetrical interventions in Canada,” said Gisela Becker, president of the Canadian Association of Midwives .
“As for the variations, there are a whole bunch of reasons,” she said.
Those reasons include everything from more women giving birth over the age of 40 through to the fragmentation of care, and from overcautious risk managers through to doctors with ingrained habits.
“It’s really hard to figure out what the correct rate of intervention should be,” said Dr. André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. . “There are a lot of factors that come into play.”
What is certain, though, is that the variations that exist are too great and suggest some inadequacies in care, he said.
Dr. Lalonde noted that the SOGC, concerned by the increasing rate of cesarean sections, has launched a plan to reduce the incidence of unnecessary surgery, with mixed results.
“We have some good guidelines but there is no money for implementation,” he said.
There were about 374,000 hospital births in Canada last year, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Of those, 18.5 per cent were delivered by C-section and 81.5 per cent were vaginal births. The cesarean rate rose to 23.7 per cent among women over the age of 35.
Ms. Becker, a midwife in Fort Smith, NWT, said that while there are cases where surgery is required, the “World Health Organization says that a C-section rate over 15 per cent is not acceptable.”
