Monday, May 11, 1998
The nurses of the Northwest Territories are understandably disappointed with the Health Minister Kelvin Ng. Once again, he has proven why a hands-off approach to running his department is a bad idea.
The NWT Registered Nurses Association held its biennual general meeting in Yellowknife recently. On the agenda were a variety of serious issues, but topping them was a troubling vacancy rate -- a quarter of all Northern nursing positions are currently unfilled.
Good nurses are essential to any health-care system. But across the North, they are even more so, as they are often required to perform an expanded roster of duties in many communities that can't afford the luxury of a resident physician.
How then, did the vacancy rate get so high?
The nurses wanted to hear from Ng, who is ultimately responsible for the situation, but apparently their meeting wasn't high enough on his priority list. They couldn't even convince Ng's deputy minister, Dave Ramsden, to make an appearance. Their excuses? Both had other things to do, one on the East Coast, one on the West.
We don't doubt that scheduling for both ministers and deputy ministers can be tricky, but in Ng's case his absence is symptomatic of a larger problem.
It was Ng's failure to take a hands-on approach to the trouble brewing last year in the Keewatin that led to the collapse of the health-care system in the region. It was also Ng's responsibility to make sure a transition in southern service providers in the Baffin went smoothly. It didn't. Now we have a deficit of nurses.
None of these situations were unavoidable. Quite the contrary. For whatever reason, Ng's hands-off style of governing has never worked. His ineptness reflects on the rest of cabinet, including Premier Don Morin. They should take over before more damage is done.
The people of the Keewatin are still paying for the mistakes made by the former regional health board.
The latest major upset in the region's health care comes little more than a year after the board's shortsighted decision to get rid of dental therapists.
Now that Health Canada has cut the region's dental funding 30 per cent and dentists are pulling out, Ottawa is talking about restructuring the dental program in conjunction with the Kivalliq Inuit Association and the KRHB to once again include dental therapists.
Residents first saw their medical services with the Northern Medical Unit re-established after they were severed by the KRHB, and now the dental therapists are likely to return. Let's hope the people of the Keewatin have seen the last of their health-care system moving backwards.
Fort McPherson, Pangnirtung, Fort Smith -- far too many Northern communities know all too well how serious a matter fire prevention is. And yet, arson and accidents continue to destroy vital buildings across the North.
There are two important weapons in our arsenal to combat fires. First comes education. It's been said before and it will be said again, but the dangers of playing with flammables cannot be understated. Youth who like playing with fire have to be taught not to.
Second comes technology. Proper sprinklers systems can save millions of dollars in property and lives as well. Retrofitting older buildings is expensive, but as recent experience proves, it is always cheaper in the long run.
Students at Diamond Jenness high school don't mess around when they put their minds to helping out the less fortunate. The teenager's "fast for cash" netted about $7,500 in 30 hours, money to go towards helping the millions of poverty-stricken people in developing countries -- people who can turn a bag of rice into a meal for many.
Where the immense problem of world hunger is concerned, $7,500 may sound like a drop in the bucket.
For the people who it will feed, the money may very well mean the difference between life and death. If the rest of us followed this example, the problem would not exist.