Key Takeaways
This episode is less about solutions but more about raising awareness
That being said, the solution lies in supporting community-led initiatives where the people of these communities can say “this is exactly what we need and how we should spend our resources”.
“Typically, talks like this, [center on how] we have so much of this, and we have so much of that, and we have sepsis… But I’m going to talk about [how], I see a lot of hope. I see a lot of resilience. I see a lot of people waking up every morning figuring out how to persevere, figuring out how to have hope and how to inspire hope in others. In the face of unbelievable circumstances and an unbelievable tragedy still waking up and saying, you know what, I’m still going to press onward.”- Dr. Kirlew
A Closer Look
Social determinants of health:
Examples include overcrowding, housing, inadequate access to clean water.
Dr. Kirlew has seen cases of 17 people living in a trailer that is 600 square feet.
Dr. Kirlew has seen cases where people have to go and get water from a lake manually haul it over to their house.
Legislation:
There are no hospitals in indigenous communities. There are only nursing stations.
These Nursing stations are not supported by legislation that ensures they are adequately stocked with essential medicine.
Indigenous Medicare is funded federally and not provincially. This leads to inadequate funding and often missing essential equipment and medicine.
Indigenous schooling is funded 30% less per student than schooling for non-indigenous people.
Colonization/ Racism:
Colonization wanted to prefer and preserve differential care structures based on ethnicity and based on race.
Sioux Lookout used to have two hospitals: one for town people and one for indigenous patients called “Sioux lookout Indian hospital”.
Indigenous people operate within a system that was designed to be inferior and it triages people based on the race towards inferior care.
“The child of systemic racism is unconscious bias”- Dr. Kirlew
We need to reflect on our own unconscious bias towards indigenous people in order to avoid letting it affect our decision-making process.
‘Indifference’ is one of the key barriers to positive change in our society.
Sad stories:
Among pregnant indigenous women, the number one concern is that they will have to travel to a hospital 100’s of kilometers away and deliver their baby without the support of their partner beside them because the government only provides funding for transportation of the mothers.
The suicide of 4 children in a small community months after the community was denied funding for a community-based suicide prevention program.
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KEYNOTE SPEAKING
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Sign up today: http://betterhelp.com/solvinghealthcare and use Discount code “solvinghealthcare"
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