Health minister's comments insulting
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Updated: July 13, 2009 5:33 PM
Health Minister Kevin Falcon’s comments on the proposed downgrading of Mission Hospital’s emergency room (July 11, 2009) are both insulting and illogical.
First, his claim that “most people will never notice the difference” is insulting in that those who DO notice will be the ones whose injuries or health crises are too serious to be treated by an “urgent care centre,” and who must now make the 20-minute drive to Abbotsford or Maple Ridge.
These are the very people an emergency room is designed to help.
Of those who don’t notice, most will be so oblivious that they never worry about health emergencies, and the rest will be dead because they couldn’t survive the trip to the nearest ER. (Of course, the dead can’t vote, and the oblivious usually don’t bother.)
Second, Falcon’s remark that people in the north “would be thrilled to have three emergency departments within 20 minutes” is illogical in that it takes no account of population density. Three ERs within a 20-minute drive of say, Salmon Arm, would mean an awful lot of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals waiting around like the Maytag repairman to serve a population perhaps a quarter the size of that of the Mission area.
Reducing the level of health care in Mission while representing it as both an unnecessary trifle and a luxury we don’t deserve amounts to political fraud.
Hilary Turner
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