(Mayor Karen Mattatal addresses yesterday’s meeting-Acadia News photo)
About 115 people attending a health care meeting in Shelburne yesterday.
It was organized in response to the on-going closures of the emergency department at Roseway Hospital, most recently this weekend.
More than a dozen people stood at the microphone inside the community centre, sharing their stories and concerns.
Shelburne Fire Chief Darrell Locke was critical of Nova Scotia Health Minister Randy Delorey’s response to the situation in Shelburne.
“I don’t know where he lives but he probably doesn’t have to take a drive when he needs an ambulance. If you don’t live here and work here and breathe it, you don’t know what it’s all about. For him to sit in his little palace in Halifax and tell us what it’s like in Shelburne, he has no idea.
Jen, a young mother, says Shelburne is not a good place to be pregnant.
“Being pregnant in Shelburne means you have to drive back and forth to Bridgewater multiple times a month. That’s very inconvenient when you don’t have a lot of family here to take care of a 3-year-old
Two members of the Nova Scotia Health Authority were present at the meeting, Tamara Gilley and Jodi Yearra, Site Manager at Roseway Hospital.
Yearra says they were there to listen.
“We came here to listen to the community and hear the concerns and we have done that. We will go back, my colleague and I and relay this information. A lot of it isn’t new information but we will relay the concerns of the community and come up with plans to move forward. We’re constantly working on the ED (emergency department)and we make every effort to get all the shifts covered. We’re continuously to look for new locums and that is always a work in progress.”
Mayor Karen Mattatall says the rally came about after frustration and concern mounted over ER closures and the lack of family doctors.
“We are here today to insist that province recognize that the health are system in Nova Scotia and access to services is in crisis and they need to find a solution that will fix the problem, guaranteeing us our rights as Canadian citizens in accordance with the Canada Health Act. In the 90’s the government decided that regionalizing health care decision-making and access to service was the direction they wanted to go. We know that is not the case. It certainly didn’t out the way they told us it would.”
