$10M for Aboriginal Health Centre
The current space on Main Street East is too small to meet the demand for services
De dwa da dehs nye>s has received provincial funding of more than $10 million to redevelop its Hamilton-based Aboriginal Health Centre.
The Ministry of Health funding will help provide an accessible space for health-care services to meet the needs of the Indigenous community in the city, the release from De dwa da dehs nye>s said. The new site — to be called Biindigen Well-Being Centre — will be located at a yet-to-be-determined space in east Hamilton.
The current location on Main Street East, west of Sherman Avenue South, is too small to meet the community demand, leaving many on the wait-list to access primary health-care services, Pat Mandy, lead for the capital redevelopment and a board member at De dwa da dehs nye>s, told The Spectator.
At least 74 individuals in Hamilton are waiting for primary care services at the centre, of which “52 per cent have been on the waiting list for over nine months,” Naomi Samuel, a communications consultant with the organization, told The Spectator in an email.
She added that the wait-list has been paused for new individuals “to not bring on false expectations of people waiting ” for primary care. Moreover, 104 individuals are on a wait-list for mental health care, with more than half of them waiting for more than seven months.
Mandy said that the team has been working on the project since 2014, carrying out consultations in the community, and understanding their needs better.
“A lot of our Indigenous community are reluctant to access health care in the mainstream,” Mandy noted, adding one of the “barriers to access is the lack of trust.”
A survey of the Indigenous community in Hamilton quoted in the release said 24 per cent of respondents have a lack of trust in health-care providers.
“That’s why we want to provide culturally appropriate and safe space for the Indigenous community members, and this will allow the space for primary care, prevention services, outreach services, diabetes, and so on,” Mandy said.
De dwa da dehs nye>s is the only organization in Hamilton that offers both western and Indigenous traditional medicine, she noted.
The new site, Mandy said, “will be a landmark location” that will give people one place to go for health, social, and housing services. The new infrastructure will take four to five years to build.
De dwa da dehs nye>s is the only organization in Hamilton that offers both western and Indigenous traditional medicine