FOCUS ON HEALH CARE

The Nova Scotia health-care system is in critical condition.

Limited ambulance availability. Families forced to personally transport ill family members from hospital to hospital.

Shortage of doctors. Over 55,000 residents with no primary care provider (I’ve been one for years).

Few available hospital beds. Patients who should be in a nursing home taking up precious hospital beds because of lack of nursing home capacity.

The VG building of our major hospital, which services all of Atlantic Canada, has been suffering water contamination for decades. You can’t even wash your hands in the tap water.

This is a medical emergency! Things need to change. The government needs to get its priorities straight. Should we be twinning the 100-series highways for millions of dollars when our whole health-care system is in such a shambles?

People are dying at home. Do we really need to spend $3.1 million for a viewing platform at Peggys Cove for tourists? We have no tourists! We are in a pandemic.

Does the federal government need to spend $682,000 doing research on Sable Island? Why are we throwing away millions yearly on a ferry that goes nowhere? It’s time to concentrate on health-care provisions.

Make it easier for all those medical specialists and family doctors who have immigrated to Nova Scotia to get certified to practise medicine. It’s a crime and a real waste to see a medical specialist working in retail! We need them.

Also, supply special vans instead of ambulances to transport patients who don’t need an ambulance.

I am not placing blame on anyone in the medical profession, EHS or paramedics. Somewhere we dropped the ball. It’s time for us to work together, do without things we’d like to have and press government to improve on what we desperately need — a decent, acceptable health-care system for all Nova Scotians. Sue Oickle, Bridgewater