As we approach the 1 year anniversay or Hurricane Katrina, here’s an interesting article from the Washington Post on the ways that pregnant women, and newborn infants and new mothers have been short changed when it comes to disaster management plans, and how new plans are being made to finally accomodate the needs of pregnant and immediately postpartum women and infants during diasasters. I was very glad to see that midwives were included in this article, and in the management plans, and are even having a say when it comes to making these plans in the first place.
- “We will be in situations where there are no health-care facilities. In fact, if there is a pandemic flu, a hospital is not where you take a pregnant woman or an infant to,” said Robbie Prepas, a certified midwife who heads disaster preparedness at the American College of Nurse-Midwives. During Katrina, Prepas helped many pregnant women with deliveries in airports and ambulances.
“We will have to retrain care providers to be comfortable with assisting deliveries outside hospitals,” she said.
Exposing more health care practitioners to the idea of out-of-hospital birth is always a good thing, in my book. And it’s always nice to see midwives actually included at the table when it comes to making national healthcare policies, plans and goals.
There is also a prominent article on the Ask Dr. Manny website that focuses on the new legislation which was recently passed in Wisconsin legalizing CPMs and CPM attended homebirth, as well as similar legislation that’s currently being debated in Alabama, North Carolina, Idaho, South Dakota, Illinois, Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri, and Indiana. The article hashes out both sides of the debate pretty well, and is a fairly mainstream venue for such an indepth focus on CPMs. Congratulations, Wisconsin! We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed for the other 10 states.
