NDP, government trade barbs over health crisis

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This article was published 25/10/2022 (745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba political leaders pointed the finger at each other and deflected blame Wednesday for the worsening crisis in health care.

“We do not, and Manitobans do not, want to go back to the dark days of the NDP government,” Premier Heather Stefanson said in response to NDP Leader Wab Kinew after he pressed the premier on the government’s record of health care restructuring and emergency room closures.

Kinew said the Progressive Conservatives are directly responsible for the chaos in hospitals described by workers on the front-line, including St. Boniface Hospital emergency room physician Dr. Kristjan Thompson.

On Tuesday, Thompson held a news conference in which he described a packed waiting room, patients on stretchers in the hallway, nurses crying, and people waiting for hours, including one person who waited 10 hours before being diagnosed with a heart attack, the signs of which weren’t readily apparent.

Emergency doctors at St. Boniface agree the department is in the worst shape of their careers, he said.

“That patient was having a heart attack while they were waiting, and that is just unacceptable,” said Thompson, the past-president of Doctors Manitoba.

The NDP leader said the Tories have failed Manitobans when it comes to health care.

“We find the PC government in the last year of their second term still scrambling to try and explain away the cuts that they have overseen over years in office,” Kinew said.

Describing a situation not unlike the one currently playing out in Manitoba, Stefanson said emergency departments were also shuttered and patients lined hospital hallways during the New Democrats’ time in government.

“I remember back in those days where someone waited 33 hours in an ER wait-room and died,” Stefanson shot back, recalling the tragic story of Brian Sinclair, a 45-year-old double-amputee who died from a treatable bladder infection after seeking, and failing to receive, medical help at the Health Sciences Centre in 2008.

The premier challenged the Opposition leader’s “litany” of false accusations, saying her government is taking action by spending a record amount on health, tripling the size of the St. Boniface emergency department, establishing a task force to reduce surgical and diagnostic backlogs, and listening to front-line workers.

“What did the members opposite do? They voted against every single one of them,” Stefanson said, her finger pointed across the aisle.

“All they have are announcements. Imaginary exercises written down on press releases,” Kinew countered.

The premier took time in question period to thank Thompson for publicizing the situation at St. Boniface Hospital’s emergency department.

“We recognize, obviously, that there are challenges within our health-care system,” Stefanson said. “What I want to say to anyone who is waiting, we are taking action when it comes to our surgical and diagnostic backlogs in our province that came about as a result of the pandemic.”

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca

Danielle Da Silva
Reporter

Danielle Da Silva is a general assignment reporter.

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