A statement in last week's issue that babies have not been born in Clearwater's hospital for several years was not entirely correct, according to Tayboure Fowler.
The statement was in an article about the first babies of the year.
Her son, Damian Fowler, was born in Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital on May 9, 2013, Fowler said.
She only had three hours of labor and so there was no time to go to Kamloops.
Damian's father is Cody Woods.
According to Dr. John Soles, typically there will be one or two births a year at DHMH.
“There will always be women who, for various reasons, can't make it to Kamloops in time,” he said. “It is better to deliver in our hospital than in the back of an ambulance (or back of a car).”
The local physician said that they stopped doing planned deliveries in December, 2008, when they no longer had sufficient medical manpower to provide this service. He added that it would be challenging to restart, as it would need sufficient physicians interested in doing deliveries, sufficient women interested in delivering here, and a great deal of retraining for the nursing staff.
“I think it unlikely that we will do planned deliveries here in the future without a very significant change in the demographics of our patient population that would support the effort involved in restarting this service,” Soles said.