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Bolduc warns line-jumpers
Vaccination 'privileges' barred; Health officials defend policy that leaves seniors at the back of the queue
By CHARLIE FIDELMAN, The Gazette
November 11, 2009 9:38 AM
As seniors worried about getting their shots, Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc yesterday warned that queue-jumping will no longer be tolerated.
Inoculation of hospital board members, donors and volunteers were "errors in judgment rather than bad faith," Bolduc said at a news conference in Quebec City.
"We never authorized privileges and we don't want to go on a witch hunt, but as of now there will be sanctions, now that the rules are clear," Bolduc said of special privileges given for vaccinations.
Punishment could go as far as firing. "We don't want to go there," he said.
Bolduc also warned that some clinics in the regions have almost exhausted their supply and may close because of vaccine shortages.
But more doses will be delivered every Thursday.
"There is enough vaccine to go around," Bolduc added.
Health officials pleaded with people to call or check the government website for vaccine availability before heading out to a clinic.
Fourteen people in Quebec have died since the second wave of the H1N1 flu hit the province and 799 have been hospitalized. Nine of the dead - or 64 per cent - were older than 60.
Quebec Federation of Senior Citizens yesterday questioned the province's policy on immunization that left the over-65 group off the roster until the very end of the campaign.
Seniors with chronic illness will be targeted after the 5-to-19 age group is finished, probably in about three weeks.
That means that people like Helene, an 89-year-old asthmatic, will have to wait, even though her doctor strongly recommended she get the swine flu shot as soon as possible. "Here I am 89 and with asthma, and they won't give it to me - they won't even talk to me," she said yesterday. "I am so aggravated this morning. My husband was a war veteran, but here we are garbage, pushed aside."
Louise Tr?panier, 64, got her shot yesterday, but was shocked to witness two seniors get turned away, including a woman in her 70s, with a doctor's note confirming that she needs the shot because she cares for her young grandchildren.
Horacio Arruda, director of the protection branch of the Quebec Public Health Department, defended the government policy on vaccinating seniors as a Canada-wide decision based on information from the national experts' committee, which took its cue from infection data in the first wave of swine flu.
While the policy favours the most vulnerable - pregnant women, people who care for babies, children, the severely ill and front-line health workers - seniors are not forgotten, he said.
"You have to understand that one person is not more important than another, but we know that people born before 1957 were exposed to something that resembles H1N1," Arruda said.
Robert Fowler, a critical-care physician at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, said health officials did not err in their vaccine priorities. "However, we would all like to have more vaccine and earlier in the season so that we would not have to be in the business of triaging vaccine delivery," he said.
It's not known yet whether parents will have to bring their children in for a booster shot. Quebec is waiting for results of a study that would confirm whether one dose provides enough protection from H1N1.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Bolduc+warns+line+jumpers/2208767/story.html
Vaccination 'privileges' barred; Health officials defend policy that leaves seniors at the back of the queue
By CHARLIE FIDELMAN, The Gazette
November 11, 2009 9:38 AM
As seniors worried about getting their shots, Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc yesterday warned that queue-jumping will no longer be tolerated.
Inoculation of hospital board members, donors and volunteers were "errors in judgment rather than bad faith," Bolduc said at a news conference in Quebec City.
"We never authorized privileges and we don't want to go on a witch hunt, but as of now there will be sanctions, now that the rules are clear," Bolduc said of special privileges given for vaccinations.
Punishment could go as far as firing. "We don't want to go there," he said.
Bolduc also warned that some clinics in the regions have almost exhausted their supply and may close because of vaccine shortages.
But more doses will be delivered every Thursday.
"There is enough vaccine to go around," Bolduc added.
Health officials pleaded with people to call or check the government website for vaccine availability before heading out to a clinic.
Fourteen people in Quebec have died since the second wave of the H1N1 flu hit the province and 799 have been hospitalized. Nine of the dead - or 64 per cent - were older than 60.
Quebec Federation of Senior Citizens yesterday questioned the province's policy on immunization that left the over-65 group off the roster until the very end of the campaign.
Seniors with chronic illness will be targeted after the 5-to-19 age group is finished, probably in about three weeks.
That means that people like Helene, an 89-year-old asthmatic, will have to wait, even though her doctor strongly recommended she get the swine flu shot as soon as possible. "Here I am 89 and with asthma, and they won't give it to me - they won't even talk to me," she said yesterday. "I am so aggravated this morning. My husband was a war veteran, but here we are garbage, pushed aside."
Louise Tr?panier, 64, got her shot yesterday, but was shocked to witness two seniors get turned away, including a woman in her 70s, with a doctor's note confirming that she needs the shot because she cares for her young grandchildren.
Horacio Arruda, director of the protection branch of the Quebec Public Health Department, defended the government policy on vaccinating seniors as a Canada-wide decision based on information from the national experts' committee, which took its cue from infection data in the first wave of swine flu.
While the policy favours the most vulnerable - pregnant women, people who care for babies, children, the severely ill and front-line health workers - seniors are not forgotten, he said.
"You have to understand that one person is not more important than another, but we know that people born before 1957 were exposed to something that resembles H1N1," Arruda said.
Robert Fowler, a critical-care physician at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, said health officials did not err in their vaccine priorities. "However, we would all like to have more vaccine and earlier in the season so that we would not have to be in the business of triaging vaccine delivery," he said.
It's not known yet whether parents will have to bring their children in for a booster shot. Quebec is waiting for results of a study that would confirm whether one dose provides enough protection from H1N1.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Bolduc+warns+line+jumpers/2208767/story.html
