DNA testing offered after baby mix-ups

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/08/2016 (3490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The federal government is offering DNA testing to anyone born at the Norway House Indian Hospital 40 years ago as it tries to sort out how four men were switched at birth in 1975.

Health Canada spokesman Eric Morrissette told the Free Press Monday the government accepts the results of DNA tests that confirm Leon Swanson and David Tait Jr. — both born at the hospital in early 1975 — were sent home with the wrong mother. The revelation comes less than a year after another DNA test found Norman Barkman and Luke Monias were switched after birth at the same hospital.

Swanson and Tait were born three days apart in January and February 1975. Barkman and Monias were born June 19, 1975.

With two confirmed cases in the same birth year, Health Minister Jane Philpott is offering DNA testing to anyone born at that hospital in the mid-1970s.

Morrissette said Health Canada is not aware of any other cases, but wouldn’t comment on the number, if any, of requests made for testing.

Former Manitoba NDP aboriginal affairs minister Eric Robinson, who has been acting as a spokesman for the four men and their families, said he wouldn’t be surprised if more cases are found.

“It was brought to our attention there may be some others,” Robinson said, adding there is plenty of speculation about residents in the community, but he has not spoken to anyone else who believes they were switched at the hospital.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson said she has heard people talk about the possibility babies were switched.

“It just sounds so unbelievable (that) you don’t go any further,” she said.

Now with two confirmed cases, it is appropriate for Health Canada to reach out to others, she said.

Leaders in other communities across Manitoba’s north are being advised Health Canada will supply DNA test kits to residents concerned about their identities.

Robinson said Norway House is the only First Nation in northern Manitoba with a hospital, and served for many years as the regional centre for indigenous births.

Swanson and Tait are from Norway House but Barkman and Monias grew up in Garden Hill.

Robinson, who is from Cross Lake, said he was also born in Norway House.

He said it’s too soon to know how the babies were mixed up, but it’s clear there were errors at more than one level; the mother who gave birth to Swanson but raised Tait was listed as “Frances Harper” on the hospital’s certificate of live birth. Her name is Frances Hart.

There is no longer a birth centre at Norway House. Most northern aboriginal mothers are sent to Thompson or Winnipeg. Norway House deals only with emergency deliveries — Health Canada says about six a year — and babies immediately receive an ID wristband before being medevaced with their mothers to Winnipeg or Thompson.

Philpott, who was not available for an interview Monday, asked her department to review the Barkman-Monias case last fall.

She said Friday that with two cases confirmed, an independent third-party will review all the hospital records from that period, and the findings will be made public.

“It’s impossible to describe how tragic this situation is, obviously, for the two gentlemen in question, for their families, for the communities,” she said Friday. “It’s appalling.”

Neither Philpott nor the department would provide more information on when the review will happen or who will conduct it.

Robinson, however, is skeptical, given the lack of government action after the Barkman and Monias story was revealed last fall.

He said neither man has been interviewed by anyone from Health Canada.

Morrissette said Monday that review is ongoing.

New Democrat Churchill Keewatinook MP Niki Ashton said the government has to take the matter very seriously.

“One case is an accident,” she said. “Two is the beginning of a pattern.”

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca