News from Canada

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.

It’s not that Thompson wants to die. In fact, she still treasures the little bursts of joys in life.

“I'm very happy to be alive. I still enjoy life. Birds chirping, small things that make up a day are still pleasant to me, they're still enjoyable. I still enjoy my friends,” she said.

“There's a lot to enjoy in life, even if it's small.”

Yet, a world in which Thompson cannot access an income is not one she thinks she’ll survive.
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Since Thompson’s illness is not clearly outlined in the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) eligibility, which currently grants a single applicant a maximum amount of $1,169 a month, she believes it could take years to qualify – something that many Ontarians who’ve applied to the program say is not uncommon. Even if Thompson did qualify, she says the whole sum of the monthly support would, at best, cover her rent.
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Dr. Naheed Dosani, a Toronto palliative care doctor and health equity lead at Kensington Health said :

“My worry is that we are creating a situation where it is easier for people to choose death by MAiD than to choose to live well, because society is not offering them adequate access to money, housing, food security and social support.”
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Finally, here is the cold conclusion this lady from Toronto has come to about how society views people in a situation similar to hers.

“The government as a body is telling people that they're willing to assist them to death because they don't have enough money to live with dignity. That is a pretty clear signal to me that, unless you are able-bodied enough or able-minded enough to work to produce profit, then you don't have any place here,” Thompson said.
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Lilas 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.
“The government as a body is telling people that they're willing to assist them to death because they don't have enough money to live with dignity. That is a pretty clear signal to me that, unless you are able-bodied enough or able-minded enough to work to produce profit, then you don't have any place here,” Thompson said.
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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.
 
Mij said:
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
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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.
 
Mij said:
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
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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.
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
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.
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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?
 
Mij said:
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
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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.

Roger Foley suffers from a degenerative brain disorder and claimed he was being offered euthanasia so regularly that he began secretly recording hospital staff. In one recording obtained by AP, a hospital ethicist tells Foley his care is costing the hospital “north of $1,500 a day” and asks if he has “an interest in assisted dying.
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And amid an unprecedented Canadian health-care shortage leading to increasing instances of emergency rooms shuttered by understaffing, the federal government’s own internal calculations have identified euthanasia as a potential cost saving.

In 2020, a report by the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that each MAID death represented approximately $17,000 in savings on “end of life costs.”
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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
 
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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
 
rvallee said:
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.
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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.
 
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