Rural families face inequity ‘at every turn’ while trying to access fertility care, with local workforce shortages and long distances to city clinics.
A rural mother missed her toddler son’s first words while she was away from home for weeks of fertility treatment.
Another woman whose symptoms were dismissed before she suffered a life-threatening ruptured ectopic pregnancy narrowly survived the emergency trip from her rural home to a regional hospital.
A family worried about the standard of care at their rural hospital considered moving to a capital city to have their baby.
“I wasn’t willing to risk my life,” the mother told rural parenting social enterprise Her Herd.
Those are some of the many stories about the complicated road to parenthood for rural families, who are disadvantaged by long distances, limited access to specialists and fragmented healthcare.
Their experiences will be aired at a NSW parliamentary inquiry examining fertility care and assisted reproductive treatment across the state.
A hearing in Tamworth on Wednesday will specifically focus on rural services and the experiences of families outside the cities.
The long distances to metropolitan fertility clinics and regional pathology labs presented the greatest barriers, according to the submission from Her Herd.
With fertility clinics only in Sydney, Newcastle or Canberra, rural patients have to cover much of the cost of accommodation and travel, stay away from their families for weeks and take time off work.
During one cycle of IVF one mother had to do a total of 10 hours’ driving to get blood tests in her nearest regional town, which was roughly the equivalent of driving from NSW to Perth.
“Fertility and pregnancy care in rural NSW is shaped by inequity at every turn,” the written submission from Her Herd said.
“Rural women and families face greater distance, poorer continuity, entrenched gendered dismissal, and crippling hidden costs.”
Continuity of care from the same clinicians – considered key to the health of pregnant women and their babies – was near-impossible for rural mothers.
A woman who experienced pain before a life-threatening ruptured ectopic pregnancy was variously diagnosed by different clinicians as being in early pregnancy, having gastro or suffering a miscarriage.
“No one had joined the dots and I almost didn’t survive the drive to Tamworth,” the woman told Her Herd.
The Torie Finnane Foundation, set-up in memory of a rural midwife and mother who died suddenly from an infectious disease in the post-natal period, said local workforce was key to care.
More midwives in country areas would reduce the burden of travel, increase early detection of complications and improve the fragmentation of healthcare, the foundation’s submission said.
“Strengthening workforce capacity, integrating telehealth, and supporting continuity-of-care pathways will immediately improve outcomes for regional families.”
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