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. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&