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Petition
Presented May 5, 2009
Dialysis Unit for Western Newfoundland
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MR. SPEAKER: The
hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate an
opportunity to bring forward again a proposal on behalf
of the residents of Southwestern Newfoundland with
respect to the lack of dialysis, or a satellite dialysis
facility in Port aux Basques.
Now, there has been a
little development brought to my attention since I last
mentioned this yesterday in the petition. I was speaking
to some people on the West Coast in my district and
actually they advised me that a Dr. Thomas, who is the
Chief of Staff in Port aux Basques, has been working
with and is concluding a proposal for the minister and
the department. He has been in consultation with Dr.
Steve Murphy, who is the nephrologist at Corner Brook.
He is the doctor, of course, the specialist who treats
most of the people from Southwestern Newfoundland and
certainly the people from my district who have to travel
to Corner Brook.
The proposal that they
are working on would see a satellite office set up in
Port aux Basques. It addresses the issue of the
equipment that would be needed. It addresses the issue
of the personnel that would be needed, and the training
that those persons would have to have. So I say to the
minister, there is a proposal in the works now. It has
been mentioned before.
We have not seen anything
come back from the Department of Health or Western
Health to deal with this issue in a positive way as to
how it could be done, so we are going to bring the ball
to your court, now, because obviously the Department of
Health does not want to deal with this. You can pound
them over the head all you want. You can make whatever
assent you want in terms of agreeing to pay for the
equipment. The staff out there can agree to be trained,
but yet the Department of Health refuse to deal with an
issue, so it is unfortunate.
Anyway, the minister will
have no excuse after this. The Chief of Staff there,
along with the head person in Corner Brook who deals
with this, is putting this proposal together, submitting
it to the department, and hopefully we will get some
kind of a positive response in a timely fashion.
I understand it is going
to be somewhat like the satellite that is in
Stephenville but not to the same extent, of course. It
will not be as large and service as many people as
currently get the treatment in Stephenville. Also, this
proposal would not impact anybody who is currently using
and wishes to continue using the home dialysis system.
Because the minister, of course, would have us all
believe that everybody in the Province who needs it can
get home dialysis, but that is just not the case.
Rather than pass the
buck, or shirk their responsibilities, we have put it to
the minister that it will be landing on his doorstep
very quickly, very soon, and we would like to see him
deal with that in a timely fashion.
As I said before, we have
not only the people who need the treatments; it is their
families that incur the emotional, the physical, stress
and strains, and the financial costs in getting from
where they live in Southwestern Newfoundland, travelling
through – can you imagine in the wintertime now, three
days a week, trying to get through the Wreckhouse? They
have to do it. It is not a case of I do not want to go,
or I will put it off until tomorrow. This is a case of
life and death. These people have to go, regardless of
the weather. In fact, it is so costly that if they go
today and the weather forecast calls for a bad day then
they have to stay because they cannot take a chance on
coming back home.
This means huge dollars
to these people, serious, serious stress levels for
these people. Hopefully the minister now - he has not
done his homework, the department has not done their
homework, but hopefully now that the homework is being
done for them it is not going to cost them much in terms
of the training because it takes about six weeks to
train a nurse to do it. We will buy the equipment, so
hopefully something will get done on this in a positive
future basis and we not have to look forward to some
budgets or all kinds of reams of excuses as to why this
cannot get done.
This a case where the
solution will be hand delivered to the minister and all
he has to do is say: Yeah. We will look after the rest
of it.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker. |
