Around 300 people came out to a meeting in Sackville last night to discuss healthcare reforms.
MLA for Memramcook-Tantramar Megan Mitton says attendees were invited to propose solutions to the challenges our province is facing, “We heard ideas of what the next steps should be. We did have some questions asked. We also had people sharing their personal stories of how their lives were saved because of the Sackville Memorial Hospital.”
Mitton gave a bit of an update to those who attended about what the proposed changes and what the healthcare reforms would have meant and how they would have impacted the Sackville area, “There were already layoff notices going out to nurses and one of the impacts of that is, I know some of the nurses were getting ready to leave the province.”
Mitton says they plan to create an interim committee, “It will be Co-Chaired by Chief Rebecca Knockwood of Fort Folly First Nation and Sackville Mayor John Higham, and we’ll have representation from different parts of our communities. That would include area residents, including Dorchester, Port Elgin and Memramcook. We will also have Sackville Hospital representatives and Mount Allison Students.”
The next step will be for the committee is to meet and gather the facts needed for when the provincial government begins its consultations with New Brunswickers, which is expected to happen in April or May.
“We already have overcrowded hospitals in urban areas like Moncton and we have people in hallways. We have really long waits in Emergency rooms, so we are actually seeing people come from Moncton and other areas to places like Sackville to get care. We need to have changes that address that reality,”Mitton says.
Premier Blaine Higgs has already said he wants to do consultations across the province, and to talk about potential healthcare reforms.
“We want to be ready for that. These types of changes keep coming back. This isn’t the first time we have heard of this kind of thing. The last time we heard of this was in 2016, under the previous government, We need to have a long term plan, with solutions,” Mitton says.
