Protest staged outside Northside General Hospital
People worried about emergency room closures, doctor shortages and a lack of medical services in Cape Breton protested outside Northside General Hospital on Sunday.
About 100 people gathered for the protest, which was planned a week ago. It was a peaceful protest but very passionate.
“We’re only just beginning. They don’t know what it’s like to deal with Northsiders,” Lisa Bond, organizer of the event, said to applause from the crowd.
“We have a message for our government. The people have spoken. The doctors have spoken. Randy Delorey (minster of health and wellness), it’s your move. I hope you make the right one.”
Drivers honked their horns in support as speakers like Keith Bain, MLA Victoria-The Lakes, spoke about the need to have local control over the healthcare system returned.
“Local control is gone. I think that’s the most important thing we need to get back,” said Bain.
People at the protest are worried Northside General Hospital will eventually be closed.
Debbie Milley of Sydney Mines said that two years ago, her youngest son had a heart attack at home. He was only 22 and the emergency room at Northside General Hospital was closed so he had to be rushed to the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney.
“The paramedics, God bless their souls, kept working on him. He had to be shocked three times. His blood pressure kept elevating,” she said.
Once her son was stabilized, the doctor told her how her son was close to not making it.
“He said, ‘If your son had’ve been 15 minutes to half an hour later, we wouldn’t be seeing your son right now. I wouldn’t be taking you in to see him.’ How sad is that?” she asked.
Bond said she has also had issues getting her sons, who have “complicated” medical issues, appropriate emergency treatment at Northside General Hospital.
“People on the Northside are dying when our hospital is closed. If you have a heart attack you don’t have a half-hour to get to the regional,” she said. “We have a beautiful hospital here. They need to hire staff for it. They owe us that.”
Ronald Crowther ofNorth Sydney is a father of two daughters ages two and four. Concern about the emergency room closures is what brought him to the protest.
“It’s bad all across Cape Breton — Glace Bay, New Waterford, all the rural areas,” he said. “Hopefully the government will see we are just fed up. We are sick of seeing the decline of our services and our hospital. Like my sign says, ‘Emergencies can not be scheduled between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.’ which is when our emergency room is open.”
Eddie Orrell, MLA for Westmount-Northside, said the Cape Breton Regional Hospital isn’t equipped to take so many extra patients when the emergency rooms are closed in other areas.
“Right now, the government doesn’t want to admit we have a problem here,” he said. “Hopefully now the government will stand up and listen.”
Bond said she invited the local Liberal MLAs, the Nova Scotia Health Authority and Delorey to the protest but none of them attended.
“I’m hoping we’ll get Randy’s attention, that he’s paying attention to what’s going on down here. And if not, we’ll have to go higher and louder and if that means packing up a group to go to Halifax we will,” she said.