Ontario needs birth centres
“Birth centres can give midwives the opportunity to work to their full scope of practice, give low-risk mothers better access to maternal and newborn care, and enhance health care by making services more readily available and closer to home.”
- Tom Closson, President and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association
Midwifery-led birth centres are an innovative solution to improve care and cut costs.
UPDATE: On Tuesday March 20th the Ontario Liberal Government announced funding for two freestanding midwifery-led birth Centres. Click here to read our press release.
Midwifery-led birth centres support normal birth
The healthiest birth for the majority of women is a normal birth. However, in Ontario today, nearly one in three women delivers her newborn by c-section. This is at an all-time high – almost double the rate of 15% recommended by the World Health Organization. The increased rate of c-sections has been indexed to poorer outcomes. Data from the U.S.indicates that providing more c-sections has not resulted in any improvements in perinatal mortality rates.
The rate of c-sections for women in midwifery care is half the provincial average. Midwives are skilled at supporting normal, physiological birth and use these skills to try to ensure the most normal birth possible for all women in their care. Midwifery clients are diverse in age, cultural background and ethnicity, socio-economic status and health status. Midwifery-led birth centres will optimize care for normal birth for all women in midwifery care.
Safe, community-based care
Safe, normal birth is increased and unnecessary interventions, such as c-sections, are reduced in birth centres, when compared to hospital. The safety of birth centres has been well established. Community-based care in birth centres enables women and newborns to reduce their exposure to hospital-based infections and to outbreaks of the flu. Birth centres provide a place to labour and birth that are set apart from institutions that care for people with infectious diseases. Birth centres can help to make midwifery more accessible and help women and their families realize their goal of a normal and healthy childbirth.
Midwives deliver cost-effective care
C-sections are costing the Ontario health care system over $100 million every year. Midwifery-led birth centres can help decrease these costs by reducing interventions and supporting normal birth. The birth centre model has been proven to work in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries. Closer to home, in Quebec, there is a well-established system of midwifery-led birth centres and Manitoba is opening a birth centre in the summer of 2011.
Download the fully-referenced Ontario Needs Birth Centres pamphlet for more information.