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Chinese prenatal classes cancelled
Community upset over CLSC decision
  
IRWIN BLOCK  
The Gazette

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0 A, R' j9 f9 I2 D5 d7 O: DSunday, March 09, 2003
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Chinese community leaders are upset that a midtown CLSC has decided to drop the only Chinese-language prenatal classes in the Montreal region.
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The classes have drawn families from Brossard and Laval to the CLSC St. Louis/du Parc on St. Joseph Blvd.
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+ c8 z" W4 m' X$ B- X8 `) QA CLSC official said yesterday that the classes are being cancelled because only a handful of about 100 clients live in the Plateau Mont Royal and Mile End area the clinic serves.

Murielle Pépin, director of professional services, said that when the Chinese classes were first offered in 1992, the CLSC was designated as having a multiethnic focus, but last month its board decided to focus on the needs of clients in its territory.
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, y/ K' ~' e% w3 N1 u* A/ D; o"We never got any financing for these prenatal and perinatal courses," Pépin said.

The service was originally offered in Cantonese by a nurse at the Montreal Chinese Hospital in 1989. Instruction in Mandarin was added later when there was an influx of Mandarin speakers from Southeast Asia.
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The idea was sparked by a study by Dr. Alice Chan-Yip in the late 1980s which detected low breast-feeding rates, calcium deficiencies in expectant mothers and iron-deficiency anemia in infants attributable to traditional dietary habits, such as lack of dairy products.

"It was all related to faulty feeding," Chan-Yip said.
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' u4 B" N; L  [In 1992 the responsibility and the nurse co-ordinator was transferred to St. Louis/du Parc.

Raznin Hébert, a nurse at the CLSC Samuel de Champlain in Brossard, which has a growing Chinese community, said as far as she knows no Chinese prenatal courses are planned, there or elsewhere in the system.

"We have been left in the lurch," said Anthony Shao, executive director of the Chinese hospital, which would be happy to take over the course.
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  h( }3 ?7 t/ s2 Q' U) M! R+ vBut that proposal, which Shao intends to make next month to the Montreal Regional Health Board, runs into what he terms "government perceived mission problems."

He called the CLSC move "penny wise and pound foolish."
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"If you don't take care of them at embryo stage and right after they are born, that affects them for their entire life."

: {/ r. V% r7 J( E' ]7 ]Health board spokesperson Lauréanne Collin said that the board will examine the Chinese hospital proposal next month. iblock@thegazette.canwest.com
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