Media release: The ACE (Advocates for the Care of the Elderly) Team says that the McNeil government is pretending in its 2020-21 Budget that long-term care is a priority, but really only taking very limited steps to address the very real crisis in care that has been continuing for many years.
Our roving reporter Judy Haiven witnessed an interaction between an older man and some cops and EHS personnel on a Halifax street. “Yes the man swore and demanded a ride to the hospital — he was not polite. But it dawned on me that he could have had mental health issues, or was very alone, or very scared. Maybe he was homeless; maybe he was drunk. The first responders’ reaction was to ridicule and threaten him with arrest,” writes Judy.
Raymond Sheppard meets with IWK officials after he and his grandson were kept waiting at the ER. “I felt and still feel, or should I say I know, that I was passed over because I am African Nova Scotian,” he writes.
Day surgery and the mandatory ride home is a problem for poor people, as are mental health issues. In this letter anti-poverty advocate Kendall Worth offers excellent solutions to Health minister Randy Delorey.
Last Wednesday NDP MLA Claudia Chender announced plans to introduce legislation to establish “bubble zones” to prevent harassment of people seeking abortion services in Nova Scotia.
Long term care facilities in Nova Scotia have been subjected to budget cuts and government neglect. One way this manifests is in staff working shorthanded. unable to provide residents the full care they need and deserve. We talk with a long term care worker and CUPE activist who is raising the alarm.
“Like in law enforcement, criminal justice, housing, employment, education racism also plays a role in the healthcare system. How could it not be,” writes Raymond Sheppard. “To address disparities in healthcare, those involved in the delivery of healthcare must first acknowledge that discrimination and anti-Black racism in the system are real.”
“I’m sure the board is 100% nice people, but the evidence is that they fail at most things,” writes accessibility activist Gus Reed. How will they ever know what it is like being sick for a week while waiting for Access-a-Bus, to be without a family physician, to depend on public transportation, to live in a pharmacy desert?
Laura Slade talks with Megan Boudreau, who has vowed not to stop until abortion seekers are no longer harassed by demonstrators at the VG in Halifax. Boudreau tells her that she was “shocked to see the anti choice protesters out so often” and wonders how “such an open, cultural, and seemingly liberal community allows these anti choice protesters to harass people like this.”
Raymond Sheppard on a long wait with his sick grandson at the IWK ER. “I had concluded we were being overlooked and left at the back of the bus because of our ethnicity.”