Ontario Hospitals seeking help for a backlog of 12,000 surgeries of children
Ontario: About 12,000 children across Ontario are currently waiting for their surgery. Officials at the four main paediatric hospitals say it is a big problem and they need the province’s help to solve it.
Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre and Health Care and Research Facility CHEOs in Ottawa were flooded due to the viral respiratory illness.
Hospitals said the cases had come down after three months of steady increase, but during this time many operations had to be canceled and staff were redeployed in overcrowded emergency departments and intensive care units.
But it was during this period that the waiting list of operations became longer. Half of the 11,789 children are waiting for their turn even after the date given by the doctors for the operations. Hospitals say that this is mainly due to the increase in respiratory diseases and the Covid-19 epidemic.
“Even though we’ve come out of these two epidemics, there’s still a burden on hospitals and we need a huge investment at the moment,” said Bruce Squires, president of McMaster Children’s Hospital.
“We need operating room staff, like nurses and anaesthesiologists, etc. to handle the situation. Operations in these hospitals are being postponed due to lack of staff. “Sylvia Jones is in constant touch with the CEOs of paediatric hospitals and is also assuring full support from the government to address the problem,” said Hana Jansen, a spokeswoman for the health minister.
