MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions?

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I take this opportunity to present my seventieth petition on behalf of the residents of South Western Newfoundland concerning the dialysis needs that exist in that particular region, from Rose Blanche, Port aux Basques, Codroy Valley and so on. As outlined earlier, the numbers vary. They vary from year to year, of course, depending upon how many people require treatment. Some people unfortunately do not live long enough to get continued treatment. Their health deteriorates and they do, in fact, pass away. So the numbers are always variable.

The current Minister of Health is certainly clued into the need. In fact, I have had some discussions with him in regard to one particular case of hardship where a person had some questions, and hats off to the minister. In fact, he has done his level best to respond. In fact, we could not even get the information we needed from Western Health, but thanks to his intervention, that information was provided. There is also some information that that individual in question, the specific individual, asked about training, that it might be possible to do home dialysis. The minister has undertaken to check into that. I realize he is quite busy, of course, with H1N1 and everything else that is going on in the health care system. Trying to deal with a specific need is not always easy, but he has certainly undertaken it and he has proven himself to be doing that. So we look forward to that information.

We realize as well that it is beyond fair to say that this government has not done anything for dialysis services in this Province. In fact, in the last number of years there has been dialysis put down on the Grand Bank, dialysis in Carbonear, dialysis services in St. Anthony. The issue we are putting forward here, of course, is that we just have not gone far enough and hopefully government will be able to find the resources so that we can do it for the people in the South Western region. We have a particularly treacherous area they have to travel through.

The three issues that come up in dialysis, or course, are: Where will you do it? We can do that in Port aux Basques. Do you have the people trained to do it? The staff there have undertaken to get trained to do it on their own time because they want to see the service available in that institution in Port aux Basques and LeGrow. The other, of course, is the cost of equipment. The people of that region have undertaken to raise the funds to get the equipment to put into the hospital. So those two big issues are removed. The third one, of course, is the operational cost on an ongoing basis. Hopefully, government and the minister will be successful in their Budget deliberations this year, and hopefully if we have the equipment looked after, if we have the training looked after - which, as I say, can easily be addressed - the ongoing operational cost, if we identify those, hopefully the minister will be able to find them in his Budget this year or convince his Cabinet colleagues that it can be made available. I guess he has to talk to the Minister of Finance on that issue as well.

Government, as I say, has gone some distance, but hopefully the people in that particular region can be attended to. I am not aware of any other region in this Province right now that has the population basis which has the need that is not being addressed. Hopefully, that can be eradicated in the very near future.

I call upon government, again, to give that its serious consideration and hopefully the funding can be made available to do that in the budget of 2010.