And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Nunavut Edition Headline News
June 4, 1999
Bureaucratic rules leaves burned woman with no care
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/nvt90604_02.html
Nunavik leaders are furious that a combination of red tape and
bureaucratic wrangling led to a
nine-hour delay in the rescue of a woman who had been badly burned out
on the land.
JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News
PUVIRNITUQ — A 70-year old Kangiqsujuaq woman
suffering severe burns over most of her body waited nine
hours for medical treatment because no nurse from the nearby
community was willing to go out on the land and help her.
Two nurses in Kangiqsujuaq said that they weren't allowed to
travel out of the community to help Sarah Ningiuruvik at her
camp because of "internal regulations."
"It's inacceptable," said Jean Dupuis, the head of Nunavik's
Regional Board of Health and Social Services. "It doesn't
make sense that people who are paid big bucks don't respond
to people who are suffering."
Ningiuruvik couldn't be immediately medevaced out to
Kuujjuaq, either, because pilots at every northern airline said
they'd already flown their allotted hours for the day.
According to the federal Civil Air Services Navigation
Commercialization Act, pilots can only fly eight hours in a
14-hour shift.
The community's mayor, Charlie Arngak, tried to convince
the nurses to go to help the woman, but to no avail. He made
call after call, without any luck, to help organize a medevac.
Increasingly more desperate, he finally appealed to local
leaders in Puvirnituq attending a meeting of the Kativik
Regional Government.
Dupuis and KRG chairman Johnny Adams stayed up all night
on the telephone, trying to convince medical authorities and
airlines to get some urgent assistance to Ningiuruvik.
Hours of wrangling
This wrangling went on for hours. Finally, accompanied by a
nurse, a group of local Canadian Rangers, and the police
constable, arrived at the scene seven hours later.
They didn't arrive back in Kangiqsujuaq until 3 am. At
daybreak, a helicopter finally able to leave Kuujjuaq to bring
the burned woman to Kuujjuaq, and then on to Montreal.
Ningiuruvik's feet are the only parts of her body that were not
burned in the explosion that rocked her cabin around 6 pm on
Tuesday evening. Ningiuruvik, who has poor vision, was
attempting to light a camp stove, but had apparently filled the
stove's reservoir with gasoline instead of naptha.
Her son, Pitsiulak, who was outside chopping wood when the
blast occurred, looked up through the window to see his
mother's face on fire. Pitsiulak, whose hands were also
burned when he rescued his mother, then travelled by skidoo
back into Kangiqsujuaq, some ten kilometers away.
Nurse not allowed to leave
Nurse Philippe Poirier had wanted to answer the call for help,
but Poirier was reminded by his co-worker, Diane Trudelle,
that nurses are not permitted to leave the village, even to
respond to medical emergencies.
"It's a good policy," she said. "We're only two and if we go to
the site, there's a loss of time and resources. Even with two
people, it took us one and a half hours to prepare the
equipment."
Trudelle said that she'd been up for more than 26 hours by
Wednesday morning.
She said that outpost nurses would require more back-up and
better facilities if they're expected to offer pre-hospital
care,
too. Police and Canadian Rangers, she maintained, have
enough First Aid training to bring in patients.
"We're not responsible for the transport of the injured," said
Trudelle's boss, Minnie Grey, executive director of Kuujjuaq's
Tulattavik Health Centre. "It was a total example of panic, not
knowing what to do and depending on the nurses."
Grey said existing rules protect the nurses and do not
jeopardize patients. By badgering the nurses to go to the
woman, she feels rescuers lost valuable time in getting
Ningiuruvik to the nursing station.
Grey said Nunavik's municipalities need to better organize
their response to emergencies, a point that was also brought
up during the recent coroner's inquest into the disastrous New
Year's Eve avalanche in Kangiqsualujjuaq. The KRG recently
received nearly $3 million from Quebec's department of public
security, money that is supposed to pay for emergency
equipment and planning.
Grey stands by her decision not to let one of the nurses go to
answer the call, saying she's not afraid of being branded "the
Wicked Witch of the North", especially when the airlines also
stood by their policies.
"I have my rules and protocols, too, and I have my limits,"
Grey said.
Rescue team has no skills
But the rescue team felt that they lacked the necessary skills
and confidence to apply the moist bandages and painkillers
that Ningiuruvik needed.
And members of the community were baffled by the nurses'
reluctance to attend to the woman. Many people are out on
the land, and there's concern that none of them have access to
emergency medical services.
"It's not like in the South," said municipal councillor Ulayu
Argnak. "It isn't fair. We have to do something."
The morning following the incident, local leaders were already
planning a political response. Dupuis, Adams and Pita Aatami,
the president of the Makivik Corporation, plan to go to
Ottawa next week to lobby federal ministers.
They're hoping to meet with Transport Minister David
Collenette and Defense Minister Art Eggleton. They want to
see Nav Can regulations changed to get rid of the duty-time
restrictions in the case of medevacs, and they want the
Canadian Armed Forces to be able to step in immediately in
case of an emergency.
Nunavik's member of parliament, Guy St-Julien, was appalled
by the reports of Ningiuruvik's long wait for help. His
standing
committee on Aboriginal Affairs recently called for changes to
Nav Canada's regulations.
"I'm angry because there are rules that we can't break to save
a life," St-Julien said. "We are ready to save people in a
foreign country with evacuations, but here we can't even
provide any help to someone who was suffering so much."
<<END EXCERPT
FOLLOWUP:
Elderly Kangiqsujuaq woman
dies of burns
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/nvt90604_03.html
Kangiqsujuaq's mayor, Charlie Arngaq,
says he wants a full official explanation
for why a 79-year-old woman was left
on the land for nine hours with no
medical attention.
JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News
PUVIRNITUQ — A 79-year old woman from Nunavik died
early Thursday morning in Quebec City from burns she had
received in an accidental explosion two days earlier.
Sarah Ningiuruvik had waited nine hours at an isolated camp
before receiving basic medical attention because nurses in the
nearby community of Kangiqsujuaq wouldn't travel out of the
village to treat her burns.
Then, because no aircraft was immediately available for a
further medical evacuation out of Kangiqsujuaq, the elderly
woman arrived at a fully-equipped burn unit only on
Wednesday afternoon.
The news of her death affected nearly everyone in
Kangiqsujuaq, population 400.
"She was very close to me," said mayor Charlie Arngak.
"She's my aunt and she was like a mother to us. It's very
sad."
Her funeral will be held within a few days. Then, Arngak
wants to see a solid official response to Ningiuruvik's death.
He isn't ruling out a call for a coroner's inquest into the
circumstances surrounding her death.
The Kativik Regional Government will also ask the region's
health board to review policies, including the regulations that
prevented nurses from traveling to treat Ningiuruvik.
The KRG resolution said that the health board was created in
1995 to deliver more appropriate services to Nunavimmiut.
"But we feel that health and related services are not adapted
as they should be to the lifestyles and subsistence
activities,"
said one regional councillor.
Up to 40 per cent of Nunavik's population spend time out on
the land to hunt and fish during the spring and summer
months. Many of them are elders who, similar to Ningiuruvik,
would be deprived of health services in an emergency
situation.
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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