BY: AMANPREET CHONKRIAN
While almost all industries have been impacted by COVID-19, few have been so heavily impacted as the healthcare industry.
Even now, families in Ontario are being left high and dry in anxiety-inducing, dangerous and potentially fatal hospital backlogs. In June of 2021, the Ontario Medical Association declared there was a backlog of upwards of 16 million health procedures, which has inevitably grown much worse since.
Adam, a Downsview resident, is worried for his family. When his in-laws arrived in Canada to become permanent residents, he could not have imagined the fate in store for them. Adam says his mother-in-law developed strange and severe symptoms within a short period of time, essentially incapacitating her. After having to be fit for a pacemaker, she suffered blackouts and severe swelling in her extremities, leaving the family concerned and increasingly perplexed.
“She came into Canada walking and talking in April [of 2021] and within a short few months could no longer walk or talk. Even breathing, she is gasping.”
In July of 2021, she was taken into Sunnybrook hospital, where doctors were still puzzled by the mysterious illness. The family was told she needed a highly specialized scan and would have to wait months before an appointment became available.
“We would have to wait possibly until December 2021 for a scan, and meanwhile she could not retain any liquids or solids.”
Thankfully, Adam’s mother in law was able to access a test sooner, which he says would never have happened without the help and advocacy of MPP Tom Rakocevic.
While the halting of procedures during COVID-19 was to blame for some of this deadly backlog, critics say the problem did not begin with the pandemic.
“The nurses are pushed to the limit. There is a grand façade of a hospital with equipment, but after a particular time in the day you cannot take more people because they are overloaded.” Said Adam of what he witnessed in the Ontario hospital.
On February 28, MPP Rakocevic spoke in the legislature in support of an NDP motion calling on the Ford government to take stronger action to address the surgical backlog.
“Surgical backlogs have existed in Ontario for a long time, thanks to years of cuts by the past and present government,” Rakocevic said. “The situation has gotten far worse, and the Ford government must immediately provide the necessary funding that the Financial Accountability Officer of Ontario says is required to address this backlog.
“Without this vital investment people will continue to wait in pain, illnesses will continue to get worse and some may even lose their lives due to complications made worse by surgical delays.”
On a local level, residents and community workers of neighbourhoods impacted strongly by COVID are left wondering what the future of healthcare holds for them.
“I’m concerned about what it means for us to have to now ‘live with COVID’.” Remarks Michelle Westin of local agency, Black Creek Community Health Centre. “Over the past 2 years, people around here lost jobs, or were out of school, were further isolated and marginalized - not to mention those that contracted the virus or lost loved ones to COVID. What does that mean for our community that already had high rates of poverty, unemployment, and chronic disease like diabetes before the pandemic?
“This community got hit hard by COVID compared to other parts of Toronto. Unless these systemic inequities are addressed, we’ll continue to see the long-term impacts of COVID on our community, and poor health long after other neighbourhoods have returned back to their ‘old normal.’”
While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will inevitably be felt for years to come, what can be controlled is the government response to the weaknesses exposed in Ontario’s healthcare system. Immediate, adequate and sustainable funding must be delivered to ensure the health and safety of Ontarians is safeguarded, pandemic or no pandemic.