Efforts to improve long-term health outcomes for indigenous people by boosting the birth weights of aboriginal children are paying off at Newcastle’s John Hunter hospital.
It is national Reconciliation Week and Hunter New England Health is highlighting the gains it is making in the care of pregnant indigenous women.
Leanne Morris is the manager of the Birra-li Maternal and Child Health Centre which has been providing antenatal care in Newcastle for 14 years.
She says birth weights of indigenous babies are steadily increasing and are now exceeding those of non-indigenous babies.
“All of our babies that are at term are born above what is considered a healthy weight, which is 2 and a half kilos or 2500 grams, 7 pounds in the old scale,” she said.
“So we do very very well and we actually do better than non-aboriginal babies in that particular area, which is amazing.”
She says services have slowly been expanding.
“Birra-li has been around since 2000, so we started with one midwife and one aboriginal health worker.
“We now have 22 staff at Birra-li, we have 11 aboriginal staff, nine are aboriginal health workers and two admin officers.
“We’ve also got four midwives, four child and family health nurses as well, and a social worker and a lactation consultant as well.”
“We actually have quite a large aboriginal population in Hunter New England Health, so we probably see about 440 births at John Hunter (each year) of aboriginal babies.
“We at Birra-li see probably about 150 births, so to be able to provide that specialist care and support we’ve got to make sure we’ve got enough staff.”
A leading pregnancy expert says the specialised services are making major inroads in closing the life expectancy gap for the region’s aboriginal population.
Professor Roger Smith, Director of the Mothers and Babies Research Centre at the University of Newcastle says the importance of a healthy pregnancy cannot be underestimated.
“Unless you are born at the right weight to a healthy mum, at the right time, you are predisposed to lots of things later in life, which are likely to shorten your life expectancy,” he said.
“So if we are to close the gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal australians, we have to begin at the beginning, inside the uterus.”
“The kidney for instance, aboriginal people are much more likely to develop renal failure and need dialysis, and you would think that’s a problem later in life.
“But your kidney is actually made up of units called nephrons, and those nephrons are formed while the baby is growing inside the uterus, and is complete by 34 to 36 weeks of pregnancy.
“If the baby is what we call growth-restricted, not growing properly, there will be a reduced number of nephrons, and that number will be what that individual has for the whole of their life, predisposing them to kidney failure later on.”
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