Group warns against provincial health cuts
Quebec’s proposed health cuts threaten nutrition, school programs and the control of infectious illnesses, and may lead to injury, illness or death, warns a national public health association.
“The cuts are short-sighted,” Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association, said Wednesday.
The association sent an open letter to Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette and Lucie Charlebois, the minister responsible for Rehabilitation, Youth Protection and Public Health, warning of a massive stress on hospitals, clinics and doctors if it slashes 30 per cent from public health.
“When funding to services designed to keep people healthy is cut back, you see conditions reemerging,” Culbert said. “Smoking rates and sexually transmitted infections will be going up. We would hate to see cuts in services to public health result in injury, illness or death. Disasters such as Walkerton can happen.”
Bacterial contamination killed at least seven people and injured thousands after an E.coli outbreak infected the drinking water of Walkerton, a small Ontario community in May 2000; an inquiry concluded that budget restrictions by the provincial government “led to the worst public health disaster involving municipal water in Canadian history” because safety testing wasn’t maintained.
Quebec’s avant-garde public health initiatives that other provinces are seeking to emulate are, unfortunately, under threat, Culbert said. “The long-term impact is a greater cost to the health-care system.”
The 50 members from coast to coast who signed the letter do not intend to interfere with Quebec’s politics, Culbert said, but rather provide support for their Québécois colleagues who are demanding the provincial health department refocus its strategy.
An association of young doctors, Jeunes médecins pour la santé publique (JMPSP), has gathered 4,500 names on a petition and has recently launched the fourth video capsule in its campaign to protest against the cuts targeting prevention.
These cuts are directly linked to Bill 10, said Lucie Granger, head of the Association pour la santé publique du Québec. Adopted by the National Assembly in February, Bill 10 was supposed to axe 1,200 fulltime administrative jobs, but the actual impact is on services, Granger said, “because the budgets that are affected are in public health.
“We’re extremely worried about the lack of priority for public health in this transformation,” Granger said. “Contrary to what they are saying, it’s not administration.”
About 50 per cent of people age 12 and older worldwide are living with at least one chronic illness. According to the World Health Organization, 80 per cent of all heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes would be prevented and more than 40 per cent of cancer would be prevented — if governments enacted prevention measures.
“People don’t see the work that public health does; the links with communities to identify needs, the nutrition programs, the antismoking campaigns, keeping an eye on mould in schools,” Granger said.
Quebec must re-evaluate its reform and invest in public health, she said.
“It’s the best — and only — way to guarantee a healthy population that will continue to contribute to the economy.”
Quebec health officials were not available to comment.