Family

A group of hospital employees has been volunteering to come in on their off time to hold some of Alaska’s tiniest and sickest babies.

Health care professionals and moms say COVID-19 ratcheted up the anxiety factor of third trimester travel. Then in April, the airline that served the Aleutians with daily flights went under.

Alaska women who live in rural and remote communities usually travel to city centers to give birth. It hasn’t always been this way. And COVID-19 has made a hard trip even more daunting.

Alaska CARES medical director Dr. Barbara Knox described “a serious uptick in cases of abusive head trauma, serious physical abuse.”

President Richard Peterson said Tribes should have been consulted before the state rolled out the proposal, not after. He notes that most children in Alaska’s foster system are Alaska Native. 

With the pandemic still going and the courthouse closed, wedding planning took a different spin.

Alaska’s population dropped by nearly 4,000 people — or 0.5%– last year, according to estimates released from the state.

“[Families] didn’t go places. They aren’t going to movies to spend little bits. They aren’t spending as much at restaurants. They aren’t doing all these other things. But they can stay at home and build models and play with RC Cars and planes.”

Even though they spent an extra month in the hospital, Madelynn’s dad is still glad his daughter was born in 2021.

It would be the first program of its kind for fishermen. The U.S. government already sponsors comparable professional development programs for young ranchers and farmers.