Three major parties have been invited Sunday to a public non-partisan meeting in Sydney Mines to discuss the subject of health care.
Drawing attention on health care
Cape Breton’s doctors plan on joining together over the weekend in order to draw attention to important health matters that they’d like to address during the provincial election campaign. The core concerns revolve around the downsizing of medical services in Cape Breton.
According to Dr. Craig Stone, a Sydney anesthesiologist and president of the Cape Breton Medical Staff Association, “In the last two years, my sense — and the sense of my colleagues and much of the public I’ve spoken to — the sense is that we’re un-building what we’ve taken so long to build”.
The issue of losing the ER dept
The most important issue planned for Sunday’s discussion involves the feared loss of the emergency department at the Northside General Hospital in North Sydney. The government is planning on closing the hospital for a while and this comes after efforts of reducing the pay for ER doctors. The fear is that all these will discourage physicians from working there and the whole ER will be lost.
The need for more physicians
The second most important issue to be discussed is the loss of physicians in recent years as the area has lost expertise fields such as thoracics, vascular surgery, and also infectious disease services. The Nova Scotia Health Authority said that it is taking physician recruitment very seriously and their efforts are ongoing.
Non-partisan event
The public meeting for addressing the concerns revolving around the future of health care is planned for 1 p.m. on Sunday at Memorial High School in Sydney Mines and 60 physicians have already agreed to take part.
The event will be a non-partisan one and the invitations are going to the three main political parties and also to health authorities. Dr. Craig Stone is hoping that “it’s at this time of the election cycle that the politicians will listen to us. And hopefully they’ll come out and say what they will do to address these things. And the public will vote accordingly.”
