Allowing LTC residents to die is not an option

Re Only a fraction of long-term-care residents killed by COVID-19 were taken to hospital. A Mount Sinai doctor says the system ‘shut them out’ with beds available, Online, Dec. 6 Kenyon Wallace has once again exposed a travesty underway in our longterm-care homes. (LTC residents were hospitalized prior to death at much lower rates than those in the community.)

This travesty appears to be a systemic extension of the practice of “taking advantage of an opportunistic infection” (not treating a treatable and survivable infection, and thus allowing the patient to die) that I observed on so many occasions when my daughter was ill and required months-long hospitalizations.

The medical care personnel in the LTCs cannot be held blameless here. Nor can Premier Doug Ford and Minister Merrilee Fullerton.

In Canada, it is prohibited by both criminal law and by the Charter of Rights to deny anyone treatment for a treatable condition that would be provided to another person.

They must be held accountable. I hope they are.

Linda Till, Sharon

Send email to lettertoed@thestar.ca; via Web at www.thestar.ca/letters. Include full name, address, phone numbers of sender; only name and city will be published. Letter writers should disclose any personal interest they have in the subject matter. We reserve the right to edit letters, which run 50-150 words.