Halifax midwifery program needs new home

The Nova Scotia Midwifery Coalition is hopeful a new home can be found for the midwifery program no longer offered by Halifax's IWK Health Centre.

The IWK program was suspended Friday, with its last remaining midwife off on leave.

Two others were fired and a third resigned.

The coalition's Erin Hemmens said the IWK does not recognize midwives as independent health-care providers and that has created an unsupportive environment for both midwives and women seeking their services.

She said the coalition is supporting a bid by the North End Community Health Centre to take over the program.

"We like this option because we think that having midwifery based out of a tertiary-care health centre is in contradiction to the midwifery model of care," said Hemmens. "We need a community-based practice that looks at pregnancy as a normal healthy state and we believe that could happen at the North End Community Health Centre."

Hemmens estimates at least a dozen women in the Halifax area will give birth by the end of January without the midwifery services they requested.