And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 07:45:55 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: 9 Hamilton doctors for Sioux Lookout
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Hospital serves 16,000 in remote Indian reserves
By Tanya Talaga
Toronto Star Medical Reporter
Nine McMaster University doctors are coming to the aid of almost 16,000
Northern Ontario Indians, who are in desperate need of medical services.
By September, the doctors should arrive at Sioux Lookout's Zone Hospital, a
federal hospital whose physicians cover a geographic area roughly the size
of France.
Jim Kraemer, McMaster's physician contract administrator for the Sioux
Lookout area, said McMaster is ``heading towards restoration of the practice.''
The University of Toronto provided medical services for many years in the
area, about 300 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. But that program folded
last June, he said.
Since U of T pulled out, only four doctors have been at the hospital,
serving patients in 30 reserves around the north, he said. Those doctors
agreed to stay on until new doctors could be found.
``The services were tremendously constrained because of the lack of
physicians,'' he said. ``For our physicians, their patients are in
communities anywhere up to 500 kilometres away or more.''
The departures led to the closing of the Zone's emergency department.
People in need of urgent care went to the only other hospital in the area,
the Sioux's District Health Centre, or were flown to hospitals in Thunder
Bay or Winnipeg.
Indian chiefs went on a hunger strike from April 9 to 22 this year to draw
attention to their plight.
First Nation Chiefs Paddy Peters of Pikangikum, Donny Morris of
Kithenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Vernon Morris of Muskrat Dam and Raymond
Beardy of Bearskin Lake participated in the fast.
Now McMaster aims to staff the Zone with 16 full-time equivalent doctors.
Some of the job's negatives can also be the positives, he said.
``The remoteness, the lack of specialists . . . for some people that means
a more fulfilling practice,'' he said.
Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Burlington, Peterborough, Windsor, London
and Kingston also have an acute shortage of family doctors, and other
specialists.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
