Ontario offers surgery for youth kept out of U.S.
Life-saving operations cancelled because of immigration ban
Ontario is flinging open its operatingroom doors to provide health care for foreign children whose life-saving surgeries stateside have been cancelled due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
In the wake of Trump’s temporary immigration ban against citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which has affected thousands of families, Health Minister Eric Hoskins offered a prescription to help.
“This is a particular subset of children who require life-saving surgery, so, absent that surgery, they will certainly die,” Hoskins told reporters Friday afternoon at Queen’s Park.
“I felt, particularly in light of the occurrences in the past week . . . in Quebec, that Canadians and Ontarians would feel comfortable and confident in expressing our openness, our willingness, our generosity,” he said, referring to Sunday’s at- tack on a mosque that left six men dead.
“What we’re saying is that Canada is a country that has always looked to ways that it could reach out and support vulnerable people around the world.”
Hoskins, a former aid worker in the Middle East and Africa and co-founder of War Child Canada, a non-governmental organization that helps kids from war zones, said Toronto’s world-renowned Hospital for Sick Children is on the case.
“SickKids has been approached by a number of hospitals in the United States with regard to a number of cases,” he said, noting most are for “highly specialized cardiac care” for infants as young as 4 months old.
These are youngsters whose surgeries had been scheduled in American pediatric hospitals, but they “are now being turned away.”
“We’re talking about a small number of children that find themselves — and their families — in these circumstances, regrettably,” said Hoskins, a physician himself.
“These children are being turned away solely because of where they were born. As Ontarians, we have an obligation to respond when we know that we have the ability to help.”
The minister said his department’s officials are also working with their counterparts in Ottawa to assist the affected children because time is of the essence.
“It’s multi-layered. We have approached the federal government because if a child and their family are able to come here, for example, to the Hospital for Sick Children, there will be a role to play for the federal government as well in . . . expediting visas,” Hoskins said.
“We have capacity in Ontario to provide highly specialized care that is not widely available in the world,” he said, noting the Herbie Fund already helps dozens of children from abroad get life-saving treatment at SickKids annually.
“This falls within that realm. There may be a cost associated — pending on the nature of the condition and the surgery that’s required — but . . . this is very early,” the minister said.
“These are children who will die, absent that life-saving surgery.”
Hoskins said he was “not aware” of any other jurisdiction in the world that is doing what Ontario is doing in offering health services to children from the seven nations affected by the immigration ban.
It’s not yet known when the first children will arrive at Sick Kids for their procedures.
Last week, Trump said refugees would be banned from entering the U.S. for 120 days as part of an “extreme vetting” aimed at supposed terrorists.
At the same time, immigration from seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — has been prohibited for three months.
The new president’s edict has sparked chaos around the globe and an estimated 60,000 people have had their visas revoked.