| MPP MACLEOD ATTACKS LIBERALS ON LONG CHEO WAIT TIMES |
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| Sunday, 01 October 2006 19:00 |
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QUEEN’S PARK – Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod today called on the McGuinty Liberals to keep their broken health care promises and lamented the unacceptable wait times for pediatric surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in the Ontario Legislature. “The Premier and the Minister of Government Services were at Women’s College Hospital this morning to announce a re-jig of the government’s website, yet in their rush to recover from a month long public relations nightmare, not a single dollar of new funding was announced for any of our overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, for our overbooked pediatric operating rooms, or to help ease the process to certify foreign trained doctors,” said MacLeod. “Going to Women’s College Hospital was pure and simple, another phoney photo-op from ‘Premier Personality’.” The Ottawa Citizen recently reported that surgical wait times at CHEO, including pediatric spinal surgeries, are up to 12 months. “One of the last things a parent wants to hear is that their young child needs surgery,” said MacLeod. “It is shameful that parents and children in Eastern Ontario and in fact all over the province have to wait up to 12 months for ear, nose and throat, spine and dental surgery. This Premier seems to think that stream-lining the process to get your child’s birth certificate somehow trumps getting these suffering children into the operating rooms and on the road to recovery. MacLeod has also written a letter to the Minister of Health, George Smitherman, requesting he share with her plans to develop and implement a province-wide strategy that puts pediatric surgical wait times among the priorities established by the province. Hansard transcripts and a copy of MacLeod’s letter are included. - 30 - For more information, Stephen Gilman, Executive Assistant Phone: 613-823-2116 Cell: 613-297-2051 |