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Facts About Us
Why is there a Hospital and Health Centre for Women?
Women comprise 52 per cent of the population and are an enormous group of health-care users. While we know that women have a range of health issues related to their unique childbearing capacity, every day we are learning more about how the differences between women and men affect their health and medical needs.
From a physiological standpoint, women’s bodies are different from men’s. Women are more vulnerable to conditions such as osteoporosis and suffer from different types of cancer. Their bodies react differently to treatment and medications, both when pregnant and not.
Women are more likely to experience major depression in their lifetimes. They also smoke for different reasons, and experience addiction to drugs and alcohol in unique ways.
The existence of a facility like BC Women’s means that women’s health issues receive the attention they deserve. BC Women’s has the ability to attract the best health-care providers and researchers, and the mandate to act as a resource for women throughout the province.
BC Women’s is Outstanding
- We deliver over 7,000 babies each year — nearly 20 per cent of B.C.’s babies.
- We are the leading high-risk maternity hospital in the province.
- We are the largest and busiest maternity hospital in Canada.
- We serve over 68,000 patients annually.
- Since our inception 75 years ago, we have delivered over 250,000 babies.
- Since using our new drug regimen, not one HIV+ baby has been born to an HIV+ mother.
- Our Breast Health Program has reduced the median wait for cancer diagnosis from 9 weeks to 9 days.
- Our Sexual Assault Service has been invited to train health professionals in places as far away as Japan.
- We are the only facility in B.C. to perform corrective surgeries on babies’ bladders and kidneys before they are born.
- Eighty-five percent of the mothers who leave us after giving birth breastfeed their babies.
- Our internationally recognized community Osteofit exercise program is offered in over 70 centres throughout B.C.
- In 2001, B.C.’s only Bachelors Program in Midwifery was developed by BC Women’s and UBC.
- We are home to the largest Recurrent Pregnancy Loss clinic in Canada.
- We were the first hospital in Canada to have midwives providing care.
- We were the first hospital in Canada to have obstetricians performing ultrasound on pregnant women. Our ultrasound unit is the largest in the country.
- We are home to the Aurora Centre — a 29 bed, six-week inpatient program helping women to beat substance dependency problems — the only long-term facility exclusively for women in the province.
- Our research on our maternity care program that showed that early amniocentesis is not as safe as having the procedure at 15 to 17 weeks changed hospital practices worldwide.
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