Dear List,
State & federal health ministers are meeting next Wed 1 August.
Professional indemnity insrance for gps and obstetricians is on the agenda.
If people in each State could lobby their Minister in the next few days we
might succeed in getting the meeting to at least recognize that this issue
needs to be extended to include midwives!!
For some background read on.
On tuesday 25 July, a group of us from the ACT Branch of Maternity Coalition
met with the ACT Health Minister Michael Moore to lobby him re the midwifery
insurance issue. The meeting was as expected but nonetheless disappointing.
Moore was totally disinterested - claiming too much else to do - not a
priority etc. Also said he did not see it as a government responsibility to
provide women with choices re maternity care!!! We pointed out that they
are responsible in this for 2 reasons:
1. they are currently forcing women to choose the high tech medical model by
not providing or supporting alternatives (limited places at the 1 birth
centre in Canberra and no support or visiiting rights for independent
midwives)
2. by forcing women to take the medical route they are wasting taxpayers
dollars since the highest numbers of admissions to hospitals are birthing
women and the majority of women don't need to be there.
Our arguments fell on deaf ears but we did learn one relevant thing - there
is to be a meeting of the National Health Ministers Council next Wednesday
(1August) and professional indemnity insurance for GPs and obstetricians is
on the agenda!!
We pushed for ACT Minister to include midwives under this agenda item with
limited success. He would only promise to 'see if the opportunity arises'.
If other state health ministers are primed on extending consideration of
indemnity insurance from doctors to midwives then there might be some hope
that this meeting could at least begin consideration of the insurance crisis
in relation to midwives.
I would be happy to provide anyone who is interested with a copy of the
briefing paper Maternit Coalition ACT used for our meeting with the ACT
Minister for Health.
yours in activism,
Barb Vernon
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