iron ring

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 27, 2021

Ontario health experts demand province abolish for-profit long-term care

With hundreds of Ontario long-term care residents dead and COVID-19 outbreaks continuing to ravage facilities across the province, a group of health experts is pushing the province to abolish for-profit long-term care facilities.

“When you think about for-profit homes, they’re by design created to have one thing in mind and that’s profits for shareholders. It’s not care for our seniors,” Dr. Naheed Dosani, said Tuesday on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

“This is a humanitarian crisis.” 

Dosani, a palliative care physician for the William Osler Health System, which has hospitals in Brampton and Etobicoke, is one of more than 215 Ontario doctors and researchers who have joined the Doctors for Justice in Long-Term Care campaign.

Despite repeated assertions from Premier Doug Ford, Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton and other provincial officials that Ontario was building an “iron ring” around its long-term care facilities to protect residents from a second wave of the virus, deaths have continued to mount.

Out of more than 5,900 COVID-19-related deaths in the province, more than 3,400 were in long-term care, according to provincial statistics.

Most recent is the outbreak at Roberta Place Long Term Care Home in Barrie, Ont., where almost every single resident has contracted COVID-19. Genome sequencing has also confirmed that a highly transmissible variant of the virus first detected in the United Kingdom has been found at the home, according to the local public health unit.

The facility was reporting 44 resident deaths as of Monday. (CBC) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-long-term-care-1.5888226