Nunavut health care needs a cure, mayors say

DENISE RIDEOUT

RANKIN INLET — Though Nunavut’s health department just opened a replacement nursing station in Arviat and plans to construct three more facilities in other communities, the territory’s mayors say all is not well with health services in their communities.

No doctors, no social workers and few nurses mean residents aren’t getting the care they need, said mayors at the Nunavut Association of Municipalities meeting in Rankin Inlet last week.

The meeting brought together many of Nunavut’s mayors, deputy mayors, councillors and administrative officers to talk about municipal issues.

Community health care was high on their agenda.

Delegates peppered Nunavut’s health minister, Ed Picco, with all sorts of questions, ranging from when their communities will get a doctor to why more communities don’t have their own midwife clinics.

Other hamlets wondered why local people aren’t being trained to work as social workers or nurses.

Picco, who attended the Rankin Inlet meeting to hear about community health issues, admitted health care is a real concern for Nunavummiut.

“We have only 26,00 people, but we have one of the most complex health systems in Canada,” the minister said.

Those complexities seemed to be common knowledge to many of the mayors.

Gjoa Haven mayor Joseph Aglukark, for example, said nurses who come from the South to work at the community’s health centre rarely stay for the long haul. He said nurses who stay several years in one community get to know their patients, making them better equipped to treat them.

The health minister agreed it would benefit communities if there wasn’t such a quick turnover in nurses.

Picco pointed out that his department is putting a lot of work into training Inuit to become nurses. But, he said, the first graduates of Arctic College’s nursing program won’t be in the workforce until 2003.

The obvious absence of doctors in many Nunavut communities is also troublesome, the mayors told Picco.

Delegates from Pangnirtung questioned when communities would begin seeing doctors stationed in them, rather than having doctors fly in for a few days.

“If I could put doctors in every community, I would,” Picco said. But, he said, there simply isn’t enough money to do so.

Picco said even though there are doctors stationed in Nunavut, patients are still being sent to hospitals in the South for treatment. There are eight doctors in Iqaluit, for example, but at least 80 patients are flown south every week.

Other delegates criticized this practice, saying it’s difficult for Inuit patients to be so far away from their family and be treated by doctors and nurses who don’t even speak their language.

Grise Fiord’s mayor, Lisa Ningiuk, suggested that more pregnant women could stay in Nunavut to give birth if Picco opened midwife clinics throughout the territory.

“It would be good for mothers to have babies in their hometowns,” she said.

Toward the end of the meeting, George Eckalook, the mayor of Resolute Bay, said the most important thing for Picco to take away from the meeting is that he needs to do something to help.

“Instead of spending money on different studies, money should be spent on concerns brought up by the communities,” Eckalook said.

Picco assured the municipal officials he has noted their concerns, saying “I appreciate the honest feedback and criticisms that you give me.”