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http://www.vancouversun.com/health/...oves+drugs+during+pandemic/1813760/story.html
B.C. doctors will have to purchase the masks, gowns, gloves and antiviral drugs they need to protect themselves and their patients in their offices during a flu pandemic.
B.C.?s provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, said in a statement published in the B.C. Medical Journal that the province will not follow Ontario?s decision to supply such items.
The Ontario government?s decision followed the deaths of two nurses and a doctor who died during the SARS outbreak of 2003. Dozens of other front-line health care workers also became ill while caring for patients.
But in B.C., the health ministry believes ?it is properly the responsibility of the physician to ensure that infection control practices are in place in these offices,? Kendall said.
He was responding to a letter from an Invermere doctor who recently moved to B.C. from Ontario. Dr. Stephen Arif suggested the B.C. government should follow Ontario?s lead, and asked whether the B.C. Medical Association should be going to bat for doctors on the matter.
Arif said doctors stock such supplies, but not in the quantities required during a pandemic. He said Kendall?s response suggests B.C. has not learned from the Ontario tragedies.
?Doctors? offices bear the brunt of these illnesses. I think there is a public responsibility to protect doctors and their office staff,? he said in an interview.
BCMA president Dr. Brian Brodie agreed with Arif and said he?ll be pressing the government to provide the supplies. There is no estimate of what such a program would cost.
?Certainly there is a distinction between regular infection control measures and those that must be taken during a pandemic,? Brodie said. ?I think Dr. Arif makes an excellent point and we would do well to look to our Ontario colleagues who lived through the SARS horrors.?
But Kendall said in an e-mail response to Vancouver Sun questions that doctors? offices are businesses that ?pay for their own business expenses, and that includes supplies such as protective masks and gowns, and also such supplies as thermometers, tongue depressors, blood pressure cuffs, etc.?
?They can claim the cost of these supplies as business expenses,? he said.
The provincial government will make sure enough supplies are on hand to meet doctors? needs, Kendall said. ?In the event of an outbreak, physicians may purchase these supplies from health authorities, which is a common practice for other specialized supplies and equipment.?
In the medical journal, Kendall wrote that a national advisory group set up by health ministers across Canada had looked at whether doctors? offices should be sent preventive antiviral medications.
The group decided against it, stating that governments? antiviral stockpiles should ?be reserved for early treatment of infection during a pandemic.?
Meanwhile, another B.C. public health official said there are no plans to quarantine or close 2010 Olympic events if there is a severe swine flu outbreak.
Unlike in Britain, where authorities have drawn up contingency plans that include banning spectators at sporting events and limiting access to courts if the H1N1 pandemic worsens, local officials say there is no evidence such tactics work.
?I can tell you right now there is not a lot of evidence they are of any benefit,? said Dr. Patricia Daly, chief medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health. ?We have no plans to do any of those things for H1N1. We will not be cancelling any of the Olympic events as a result of the pandemic.?
In fact, Daly said the provincial education ministry recently rescinded a policy of closing schools that reported cases of swine flu.
?Part of the reason we are not doing that is because overwhelmingly, this virus is causing symptoms that are more typical of seasonal flu than of more serious diseases,? Daly said. ?We just don?t think the spectrum of illness warrants those kinds of draconian measures.?
Daly said the last pandemic, in 1968, occurred the same year as two Olympic Games, the Summer Games in Mexico and the Winter Games in France. ?They still went on,? she said.
Daly said hand-washing and common sense are the best ways to reduce the risk of catching the H1N1 virus.
?We have mitigation strategies for how to reduce the impact, including improved hand-washing at all the venues and providing information in the visitors? guide,? she said.
Sun Health Issues reporter
pfayerman@vancouversun.com
With a file from Jeff Lee
B.C. doctors will have to purchase the masks, gowns, gloves and antiviral drugs they need to protect themselves and their patients in their offices during a flu pandemic.
B.C.?s provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, said in a statement published in the B.C. Medical Journal that the province will not follow Ontario?s decision to supply such items.
The Ontario government?s decision followed the deaths of two nurses and a doctor who died during the SARS outbreak of 2003. Dozens of other front-line health care workers also became ill while caring for patients.
But in B.C., the health ministry believes ?it is properly the responsibility of the physician to ensure that infection control practices are in place in these offices,? Kendall said.
He was responding to a letter from an Invermere doctor who recently moved to B.C. from Ontario. Dr. Stephen Arif suggested the B.C. government should follow Ontario?s lead, and asked whether the B.C. Medical Association should be going to bat for doctors on the matter.
Arif said doctors stock such supplies, but not in the quantities required during a pandemic. He said Kendall?s response suggests B.C. has not learned from the Ontario tragedies.
?Doctors? offices bear the brunt of these illnesses. I think there is a public responsibility to protect doctors and their office staff,? he said in an interview.
BCMA president Dr. Brian Brodie agreed with Arif and said he?ll be pressing the government to provide the supplies. There is no estimate of what such a program would cost.
?Certainly there is a distinction between regular infection control measures and those that must be taken during a pandemic,? Brodie said. ?I think Dr. Arif makes an excellent point and we would do well to look to our Ontario colleagues who lived through the SARS horrors.?
But Kendall said in an e-mail response to Vancouver Sun questions that doctors? offices are businesses that ?pay for their own business expenses, and that includes supplies such as protective masks and gowns, and also such supplies as thermometers, tongue depressors, blood pressure cuffs, etc.?
?They can claim the cost of these supplies as business expenses,? he said.
The provincial government will make sure enough supplies are on hand to meet doctors? needs, Kendall said. ?In the event of an outbreak, physicians may purchase these supplies from health authorities, which is a common practice for other specialized supplies and equipment.?
In the medical journal, Kendall wrote that a national advisory group set up by health ministers across Canada had looked at whether doctors? offices should be sent preventive antiviral medications.
The group decided against it, stating that governments? antiviral stockpiles should ?be reserved for early treatment of infection during a pandemic.?
Meanwhile, another B.C. public health official said there are no plans to quarantine or close 2010 Olympic events if there is a severe swine flu outbreak.
Unlike in Britain, where authorities have drawn up contingency plans that include banning spectators at sporting events and limiting access to courts if the H1N1 pandemic worsens, local officials say there is no evidence such tactics work.
?I can tell you right now there is not a lot of evidence they are of any benefit,? said Dr. Patricia Daly, chief medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health. ?We have no plans to do any of those things for H1N1. We will not be cancelling any of the Olympic events as a result of the pandemic.?
In fact, Daly said the provincial education ministry recently rescinded a policy of closing schools that reported cases of swine flu.
?Part of the reason we are not doing that is because overwhelmingly, this virus is causing symptoms that are more typical of seasonal flu than of more serious diseases,? Daly said. ?We just don?t think the spectrum of illness warrants those kinds of draconian measures.?
Daly said the last pandemic, in 1968, occurred the same year as two Olympic Games, the Summer Games in Mexico and the Winter Games in France. ?They still went on,? she said.
Daly said hand-washing and common sense are the best ways to reduce the risk of catching the H1N1 virus.
?We have mitigation strategies for how to reduce the impact, including improved hand-washing at all the venues and providing information in the visitors? guide,? she said.
Sun Health Issues reporter
pfayerman@vancouversun.com
With a file from Jeff Lee