Pleas to let parents go with sick kids long ignored
Pleas for changes to medical evacuations that force the separation of parents from their ill children have long fallen on deaf ears, Quebec’s northern health workers say.
Pediatrician Johanne Morel, who has been caring for First Nations children in their communities for more than 30 years, got a petition of 900 Inuit and Cree signatures in 1990 calling on Quebec to change its policy of barring parents from accompanying sick children who are airlifted from remote areas for urgent medical care. Parents can follow on the next available commercial flight, but bad weather can cause delays of several days.
Many accept the situation because that’s how it has always been, said Morel, now head of McGill University Health Centre’s Northern and Native Child Health Program. However, one mother was so distressed, she ran after the plane on the tarmac.
Separating children from parents is cruel, Morel said.
“The policy is shocking and offensive. It’s traumatizing for both parent and child. Parents should always be aboard next to the child,” she said.
“We’ve all seen the children arrive at the ER alone. It’s terrible. Many don’t speak French or English. They go to the operating room, they get an IV (intravenous line), a mask on their face, people rush all around them, and it’s really stressful.
“I was told to forget it,” said Morel of the petition sent to Évacutation aéromédicales du Québec (ÉVAQ) and the ministers then heading the health and transportation departments.
ÉVAQ officials say they are reassessing their policy. However, the Challenger “air hospital” is too small to accommodate passengers because of space logistics and airsafety regulations.
Jane Beaudoin, executive director of Inuulitsivik Health Centre, which covers seven villages near Hudson Bay, said she was stonewalled when she tried to change the policy nine years ago.
“When I first went up, I thought, ‘Really, you’re sending a child without a parent?’ I would be frantic. You know what? They accept it because it’s been like that forever.
“And they’re just happy that the child is going to be taken care of.”
Morel and Beaudoin have thrown their support behind the three Montreal Children’s Hospital
No other population would be expected to make do with such undignified and unsafe health-care conditions.
doctors who are now calling for changes. Spearheaded by emergency pediatrician Samir Shaheen-Hussain, the physicians sent a four-page letter to government officials last month arguing the policy is insensitive to First Nations and fails to reflect a standard of care available in the rest of Canada.
It’s an absurd policy — parents are needed to help supervise and comfort their children, as well as to consent to major medical procedures, Shaheen-Hussain said.
“This is another example of Indigenous kids paying the price for draconian governmental policy. No other population would be expected to make do with such undignified and unsafe health-care conditions.”
In an earlier interview with the Montreal Gazette, Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette said he was open to reconsidering the policy.