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Petition
Presented May 12, 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 have a few words on behalf again of the
residents of south western Newfoundland with respect to
the lack of dialysis services in that region. I am still
smiling actually, over the Minister of Health’s answer
to one of the questions there recently. He is not known
to withhold information he says.
Anyway, we have some
difficulty even getting some information from the
minister on this petition because the Town of Port aux
Basques met with the minister in Corner Brook last fall.
He committed that, not to solve the problem but he would
at least check into it. He would consider it and get
back to them with what he thought was an appropriate
course of action. I do believe that is some six or seven
months ago on the calendar. We have not even gotten a
letter acknowledging that he had the meeting, let alone
anything about where we might go to on a go-forward
basis.
Meanwhile, the people who
use dialysis in south western Newfoundland, every where
that stretches, from LaPoile up to the Codroy Valley,
they make three trips a week and they continue to make
them since last fall, I say to the minister, three trips
a week, nine or ten people at any given time. So you are
looking at hundreds of trips that have been made even
since he had the meeting with the people out in that
area and not so much as the courtesy of a letter
acknowledging their concerns. Not a letter even
acknowledging their concerns.
Here we are in the
meantime; we know we have a facility out there that is
capable of handling the dialysis piece. We still have a
piece of work to do. Exactly what corner you are going
to put them in, do you have to take down some walls and
where are you going to situate them, but I am sure
within the confines of the Dr. Charles L. LeGrow Health
Centre we can find enough room to put a suite that looks
after a satellite dialysis machine if that is what is
resolved to be the correct way to go. We also know that
the money is available for the equipment to be used in
that facility. We also know that the people out there
want to do it that way, if they have a preference.
Nobody likes to be getting into their vehicle or in a
taxi and travelling three times a week from Port aux
Basques to Corner Brook or Stephenville and back again
in all kinds of nasty weather.
By the way, we can get
them in other places in this Province, with the same
types of numbers, in the Carbonear area, in the St.
Anthony area, and the Grand Bank area. We can do it all
there but yet Port aux Basques has had this need and
been crying out with this need for some time now and no,
we cannot even get the - at least addressed, not even
asking for the equipment like these other areas and the
training, the nurses are prepared to be trained. It
would take somewhere between, around eight weeks, I
understand for the basic training, and then there has to
be some additional two to four weeks clinical training.
We have the staff, no doubt, who are prepared to commit
to do that. They are concerned about providing the
service to people as well. Yet, this government won’t
even listen and respond to a letter.
The costing issue: We
have never ever gotten into what it cost. So far, the
government of this Province spends hundreds of thousands
of dollars in taxi fares. Now, the medication costs, the
training costs, the nursing costs, the technician costs,
and so on, are all the same. Whether they do it
Stephenville, whether they do in Port aux Basques, or do
it in Corner Brook, those costs are static. They don’t
change. When it comes to the transportation costs to get
the patients from their homes to that facility, of
course it does cost a good deal more.
We have a taxi fare which
is costing about $100 a day to each person. |
