PM#0382659799
Dispelling myths of caribou conservation efforts PAGES 10 & 11
Attawapiskat housing woes continue PAGE 3
A chiefs tale of hunting on the land PAGE 12
December 8, 2011
Vol. 38 #25
9,300 copies distributed $1.50
Northern Ontario’s First Nation Voice since 1974
www.wawataynews.ca
Planes, trains and buses for medical transportation
Something to celebrate
Rick Garrick
Wawatay News
Kashechewan Chief Jonathan Solomon said policies for medical travel are causing havoc for his community members. “It is a nightmare,” Solomon said during the Nov. 22-24 Nishnawbe Aski Nation special chiefs assembly. He said community members from Kashechewan are travelling to Kingston for medical trips by plane, train and bus. Travel times can take up to 16 to 18 hours. “And they come back the same way, (even) if they had a major surgery, that’s how they come back,” he said. From Kashechewan, residents usually take a plane to Moosonee, a train to Cochrane and a bus to Kingston. Solomon said the medical transportation system is “very frustrating” because community members are missing appointments because of improper travel arrangements. “And even hotels – some people get stranded on the streets because accommodations were missed,” Solomon said. “It is very frustrating; people are angry because these are health issues.” Solomon said one community member waited two years for an appointment but after a long trip by plane and train to the bus station, he discovered a bus ticket wasn’t available for him. As a result, he returned home and missed his long awaited appointment. “There is a lack in consistency in making proper arrangements,” Solomon said. He said the travel by bus to a medical trip could last up to 16 hours. “If you leave Cochrane in the morning at eight o’clock, you are not going to get to your destination until after midnight,” he said. “That’s a long trip for an unhealthy person.” Solomon said the cutbacks on medical air charters from the James Bay coast to Kingston is just one of the cutbacks in health service to community members. “If your wife is pregnant and you want to be there when your child is born ... that used to be an automatic,”
Solomon said. “Now the mother goes alone and when something happens at the hospital, if a mother loses that child, she’s all alone. She’s got no support.” Solomon raised the issue after Susan Russell, acting regional director with First Nations and Inuit Health, spoke during the assembly. Russell deferred questions from Wawatay News to a media contact at FNIH who then suggested speaking with Jim Harrold, president and CEO of Weeneebayko Area Health Authority. Harrold said Health Canada policies state that transportation must be provided at the lowest cost to the closest point where care can be provided within the area. “It may require that individual to fly down to Moosonee from Kashechewan, as an example, and then take the train down to Cochrane and then some sort of surface transportation to Timmins in order to get that (treatment) done,” Harrold said. “We run a charter airplane from Moosonee to Kingston three days a week. It starts in Kingston, comes up here with patients who are returning and then it picks up patients who have been referred to Kingston.” Harrold said all patients are prior approved by Health Canada, noting that they usually have about 55 patients from Peawanuck, Attawapiskat, Kashechewan, Fort Albany, Moose Cree and Mocreebec out every night somewhere in Ontario. “We are really only (Health Canada’s) agent in implementing the program,” Harrold said. “They are the ones who set the non-insured health benefit policies and they are the ones who prior approve everyone’s access to medical transportation.” Grand Chief Stan Beardy said there are ongoing concerns regarding medical transportation throughout NAN. “It’s a national policy that does not take into real consideration the diversity, the challenges and the uniqueness of being in the far remote north,” Beardy said. “I don’t think they realize, in most cases, you are talking about fly-in communities.”
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Students from Pelican Falls First Nation High School outside Sioux Lookout gathered Dec. 1 to celebrate the announcement that the road leading to the school will be repaired. During the Nishnawbe Aski Nation chiefs assembly Nov. 22-24 in Thunder Bay, chiefs from the communities that send students to the school agreed to cover the cost of initial work to repair the road. Voted one of the worst roads in Ontario, the road was a safety concern for staff and students of the First Nations-run school. See story on page 15.
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Wasaya Airways Season’s Greetings Seat Sale Purchase your travel beginning December 8, 2011 until December 23, 2011, for travel December 15, 2011 to January 7, 2012.
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