Nov. 04, 2009 - Issue #733: Broke
Issues
Health Care Crisis
A pandemic of incompetence: H1N1 vaccine chaos just the tip of the iceberg
We've known for some-time that the Alberta government has a structural
inability to plan for the long term—we've seen this with their failures
on infrastructure, the environment, public services spending and the economy
as a whole. Now, it's become clear that they also lack the ability to
carefully assess what is happening in the province and plan in the short term
as well.
Anybody who has even remotely been paying attention could tell what was
happening. After six months of the World Health Organization, media outlets
and governments talking endlessly about the H1N1 pandemic and its potential
repercussions, no one should have been surprised by the sense of panic that
had developed in the population at large.
When public health experts from across North America hit the airwaves this
fall to say repeatedly that everyone should get the vaccine when it comes out
in order to protect themselves, it became clear that the public sense of
panic would immediately be manifest in the perceived urgency of the need to
get the vaccine.
It is unbelievable, therefore, that the government of Alberta could have been
in any way surprised by the massive turn-out of people seeking to get the
vaccine in the first five days it was offered. Yet that is exactly what they
claim—that they were taken by surprise by the "unexpected stampede" of
"panicked" Albertans. That they assumed that, after all the hype about the
flu and the vaccine, people would voluntarily step aside and let those in
high-risk groups get the shot first shows just how out of touch the
government is with the population at large.
Perhaps it's not fair to suggest that the government had no plan for dealing
with the vaccinations. Alberta, like virtually every other jurisdiction in
the world, has a plan in place for dealing with pandemics. That plan clearly
states that in the case of a pandemic priority in vaccination will be given
to those most at risk. But Health Minister Ron Liepert decided to ignore that
plan and make the vaccine available to everyone at once. And he appears to
have done so for ideological reasons, telling reporters that he didn't "want
to be like the old Soviet Union where you're interrogating people" to
determine if they are high-risk or not.
After six days of thousands of people in the high-risk categories being
turned away from overwhelmed clinics around the province, the government
finally decided to shut down all the clinics while they developed a plan for
ensuring that those at risk actually receive priority for the shot. In other
words, after six days of mayhem they have decided to actually follow
Alberta's pandemic plan.
The problem now, however, is that as a result of the six days of mayhem, the
province's supplies of the vaccine are running low, and the manufacturer of
the vaccine is seriously behind in their production schedule.
Ron Liepert is now taking credit for the fact that in the first six days some
300 000 people were vaccinated, and is suggesting that that figure shows
the degree to which their "plan" was successful. What he does not say,
however, is that the 300 000 figure is more a testament to the
dedication of the front-line health workers who managed to continue
delivering vaccines despite the chaos and mayhem that resulted at the
clinics. Once again, it is clear that when it comes to health care, this
government is flailing and making stuff up on the fly, and were it not for
the dedication of health workers we would be in much worse shape than we
already are.
One of the reasons that more clinics could not initially be opened up,
particularly in the larger centres, is that there is simply not enough
front-line health-care staff to do so. Which is an aspect of this discussion
that has not received much air-play in the media—the fact that the
onset of this pandemic is happening while our health care system in general
is in crisis.
Even before the arrival of the flu we were in a situation in which we did not
have enough nurses, doctors or hospital beds and where our emergency rooms
were overcrowded and overwhelmed. At the same time, the provincial government
has been on a mission over the last six months to further cut costs in health
care, meaning even fewer beds and staff. In other words, our health care
system was already strained and bursting at the seams and getting
worse.
Now we are heading into a pandemic which will, by definition, mean increased
numbers of hospitalizations, emergency room visits and extended stays. It
will also mean, especially given the failure to prioritize vaccine
distribution to front-line health staff, large numbers of hospital staff
getting the flu and missing work. None of this, however, seems capable of
reversing Ron Liepert and Stephen Duckett's determination to proceed with
taking at least another $1 billion out of the health care system.
The chaos at the vaccination clinics was really just the tip of the iceberg.
As H1N1 works its way through our population over the course of the next six
months, the impacts of this government's neglect and destruction of the
public health care system will become more and more evident—lives will
be lost as a result. Albertans need to speak up now and demand that the
government reinvest in public health care immediately to ensure that the
system can adequately meet both current demand and the expected increase in
demand resulting from H1N1. Albertans also need to demand that the government
develop a concerted plan for health care that prioritizes the health and
well-being of Albertans over the long term, rather than just the bottom line.
If we don't demand that now, will the system be there three months from now
when we really need it? V
Ricardo Acuña is executive director of the Parkland Institute, a
non-partisan public policy research institute housed at the University of
Alberta.
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