News from Canada

Toronto woman facing financial loss of long COVID begins process for medically assisted death.

https://www.cp24.com/news/toronto-w...rocess-for-medically-assisted-death-1.5982576

 

Oh Lord... but what kind of society do we live in, where access to adequate basic resources and supports becomes more difficult than access to assisted dying ? It's so unfair and horribly sad... This is exactly the kind of lacuna that I feared with this law of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).This reflects in my opinion a serious lack of humanity.

Dr. Naheed Dosani, a Toronto palliative care doctor and health equity lead at Kensington Health said :

Finally, here is the cold conclusion this lady from Toronto has come to about how society views people in a situation similar to hers.

 

Op-ed: ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) rates are killing people in Ontario
People are choosing medically assisted death(MAID) because they cannot afford to live

https://nowtoronto.com/news/op-ed-odsp-rates-are-killing-people-in-ontario

 

I would think the people most responsible are the people who campaigned for such schemes. It is interesting to see discussions as voluntary euthanasia is a topic a lot of countries are expected to consider in the coming years/decades.

 

this is highly disturbing and I am not sure how things will change for these patients living both in poverty and with a lifelong disabling disease that makes life so hard. Our patient population is increasingly vulnerable because this disease is not accepted in mainstream medicine, so access to medical care is often time impossible.

 

Rehab program gives hope to 'long COVID' sufferers.
A 'groundbreaking' rehab program at the Ottawa Hospital is offering hope to people suffering from "long COVID".

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/new-hope-for-long-covid-sufferers-1.6521742?cmp=rss

 

Although more realistic than many BPS influenced approaches, I worry it will still give false hope.

We desperately need data on what percentage of people recover in the first two years from post viral conditions and what percentage will have ongoing ME, and ideally a means of distinguishing the two.

 

Would love to understand the rationale for the quotes around long COVID. Is the suggestion that there is no such thing as long COVID, or that the people suffering with long COVID may not in fact have long COVID?

 

‘Really angry’: Why Canadians with long COVID struggle to access financial aid
As more Canadians with long COVID try to apply for insurance and government disability support, many are encountering the same hurdles that have long been familiar to residents with chronic fatigue syndrome.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/inv...ticle-long-covid-financial-disability-support

 

Another case of a sick Canadian offered death instead of treatment — this time, a veteran

https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...eath-instead-of-treatment-this-time-a-veteran

 

Though in principle I support the concept of assisted dying, this is an illustration of the problems in practice of establishing an acceptable system to facilitate this.

It feels very wrong that failure to provide adequate levels of health or social care can become a reason for choosing assisted dying. There not being a treatment for a condition is one thing, but someone in that position should not be forced into a decision before experiencing living with that condition with appropriate practical support.

 

Whether one is for or against medical assistance in dying, offering it as an option because there is a lack of resources or access to appropriate care and support is, in my view, an unethical and inhumane aberration. This outrages me more than I can express...my worst fears are confirmed. This is exactly the perverse effect that I apprehended with this law on euthanasia. What follows demonstrates in my opinion a coldness which trivializes and that freezes the blood, it worries me for any suffering and vulnerable person who is being let down by health care.

I always thought that a person's life is priceless, more precious than the material cost, well, it seems that in my country for more and more people it has a limit price. My God...

 

Euthanasia "cannot be a default for Canada’s failure to fulfill its human rights obligations,” said Marie-Claude Landry, the head of its Human Rights Commission.

Canada is the only country that allows nurse practitioners, not just doctors, to end patients’ lives. Medical authorities in its two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec, explicitly instruct doctors not to indicate on death certificates if people died from euthanasia.

https://globalnews.ca/news/9052672/canada-euthanasia-laws-disabled/

 

A new federal task force on Long Covid is set up in Canada. In a radio interview (Quebec- in French), Dr. André Veillette, immunologist (IRCM), explains that this working group will seek to assess "what we know (about LC), do not know and the relevant questions to pose ". He affirms that it will be " an epidemic after the pandemic ", evokes its significant societal and economic impacts which are already being felt. He talks about the need to take good care of people with LC. He mentions ME/CFS as "somewhat equivalent symptoms" to LC and that it is " a very serious condition ".

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/p...834/sante-maladie-recherche-sciences-guerison

* IRCM: Institut de recherche clinique de Montréal

 

Very good news. Hopefully it will result in not just talk, but action of some sort. If nothing else, it should increase acceptance of LC and related conditions, incl. ME.

 

Patients with long COVID say they feel abandoned by health services as symptoms persist.

Patino was a patient at St. Paul's post-COVID recovery clinic in Vancouver, but after 18 months of treatment, she was told she could no longer be treated.

In B.C., the Post-Covid Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Network (PCICCN) operates five clinics to treat long-haulers.

Almost 3,000 patients have sought treatment at the clinics, which focus on long COVID research and patient care by connecting long-haulers with experts including physiotherapists, occupational therapists and specialized physicians. The Ministry of Health says more than 6,000 patients in B.C. have been referred to the clinics.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/long-covid-sense-abandonment-1.6564583

 

Discharge those who don't recover. Take credit for those who recover naturally. That's the biopsychosocial model in a nutshell. It's all a giant scam.

 

they say that in order to recover you must participate in self-management... blah blah blah. The discharging of patients is not new- and abandoning patients is not new. I would suspect that those that recovered did not do so because of the program, they simply had enough oomph in their cells to do so.

 

How many patients actually got worse with their physio and 'treatments' and didn't even realize?