Birthing on Country gets a boost

The success of a Birthing on Country project for Aboriginal women and their families at Nowra has led the federal health department to fund a dedicated Birthing on Country Centre of Excellence at the NSW South Coast town.

The $22.5 million birthing centre to be built at Nowra will provide “culturally safe care and wraparound support services” for First Nations families during pregnancy, birth and beyond.

The aim is to allow Indigenous women to give birth on their ancestral country with Indigenous midwives in a dedicated facility.

It will be run by Waminda Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation and Charles Darwin University and will open in 2025–26.

Waminda has operated a Birthing on Country program in Nowra since 2018.

Senior midwife at the Waminda centre, Mel Briggs, is an NSWNMA member and a long-time advocate for culturally safe maternity care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and for Birthing on Country.

“We need a review of all PBS items, which have not been reviewed since 2010.

“Nurse practitioners should be able to access all Close the Gap initiatives.”

Speaking later to The Lamp, Lesley says she has made many representations to government ministers appealing for reform of the MBS.

“I’ve written so many letters, I think I’m on the stalker list.”

Meanwhile, she has done training to do echocardiograms and is considering using her own money to buy a machine if the struggling Gidgee health service is unable to afford one.

She adds, “Thank God we can order all the tests for pap smears and prostates, because we find so many cancers.” n

In June 2020, Mel became the first endorsed Aboriginal midwife in NSW and only the second in Australia.

First Nations mothers are 3–5 times more likely than other mothers to experience maternal mortality, while babies are 2–3 times more likely to be born preterm, with low birth weight, or not to survive their first year, a recent study shows.

Mel told Australian Associated Press that the birthing centre will help to close the child mortality gap by providing ongoing holistic support to mothers from when they fall pregnant until after they give birth.

“Our women are judged, our women are stereotyped, our women do not feel comfortable walking into those (hospital) doors,” she said.

“If that is a problem for them to access, then they won’t go.

“These are the determining factors as to why babies are born prematurely, because it’s a systemic problem and what we’ve had to do to is adapt to ensure our own model that our women are having better health outcomes.” n