It will be difficult to echo in an equally compelling way the sound, logical and intelligent message in Mark Gentili’s award-winning editorial supporting NEO Kids.
Gentili, the managing editor of Northern Life, won the top award in the country from the Canadian Community Newspaper Association for his analytical breakdown of Health Sciences North's (HSN) submission to the LHIN for the creation of NEO Kids, and for his probing as to why it wasn’t endorsed. It didn’t make sense to him, and it doesn’t make sense to us.
The editorial clearly supports what many of us have questioned: why are we still sending our sick children over the highway every hour of the day, every day of the year for health care when there is solid support and concrete reasons to treat them here, closer to home?
Unqualified support for NEO Kids comes from hospitals across Northern Ontario, the Sudbury and District Health Unit, Toronto SickKids Hospital, CHEO in Ottawa, northern school boards and municipalities, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Laurentian University, local physicians, colleges, health care providers and a host of other credible supporters.
The Union of Ontario Indians says NEO Kids would improve the health of those living in remote First Nations communities.
And families of sick children here in the North will tell you that the financial and emotional cost of travelling to southern Ontario for health care for their children can never be truly documented or appreciated.
Health care experts will tell you that there will never be a profitable business case for funding children’s heath care. SickKids in Toronto was never built on a “sound business case.” It was built on need -- sound research that demonstrated the high volume of care needs for children. Research also demonstrated that children respond better in a care environment conducive to their special needs.
Children’s health was the priority.
The health of Northern Ontario children is just as important. Somewhere along the way here in the North, this priority got lost.
HSN’s CEO Dr. Denis Roy frequently reminds us that children are not small adults. They are not treated as adults in any other sector of our society - from the courts to education - yet in our current health care structure in Sudbury children receiving chemotherapy are treated alongside adults receiving chemotherapy. It’s not right.
The pediatric “rooms” at HSN are bursting at the seams. The clinics housed in the former daycare centre, which is the temporary home of NEO Kids, are seriously overcrowded and inadequate for the demands required of them. New clinics that could save thousands of trips by children and their families to southern Ontario for health care are desperately needed.
Attracting specialized pediatricians to Northern Ontario could be realized if they had somewhere to come to, and I don’t mean a temporary centre without room or resources to treat patients.
The inequity in health care for our children in
Northern Ontario is glaringly apparent and totally unacceptable. There is no system planning for the health care needs of our youngest patients. How can this continue as the rates of serious diseases and illnesses in children continue to rise in Northern Ontario?
We are growing weary of lip service; vague direction, obscure reasoning and obvious detachment by the powers that be, who are stalling or avoiding making a decision to move this critical priority forward.
We want equitable health care for our children.
We want NEO Kids tabled as a priority for the children of northeastern Ontario. We want our share of the $160 billion the provincial government is investing in roads, hospitals, schools and transit.
NEO Kids is a logical, proactive and necessary approach to caring for our sick children so they will grow up to be healthy adults. The investment will be felt for generations.
We want a solid commitment that our sick children matter and a plan to address this obvious inequity in health care service in our province.
Rick Bartolucci is the former MPP for Sudbury.
