In this third installment of our critique of Canadian healthcare, we continue our look at specific, individual incidents pointing out the fact that a system that kills more than 100,000 preborn Canadians a year, throws out the classic Hippocratic Oath and is in sympathy with licentious sex education – as well as the liberal distribution of abortifacient “morning-after pills” and other questionable drugs and devices – inevitably experiences rot and corruption in numerous other areas. To wit:

• In March 2003, Ontario’s chief medical officer was accused by an expert on infectious diseases of concealing the extent of the 2002 West Nile virus outbreak. The expert said he had “begged” Dr. Colin D’Cunha to notify the public about outbreaks of the disease, which killed at least 11 people.

• In May 2003, the father of a 17-month old boy who died in 2001 told a coroner’s inquest that paramedics ignored his and his wife’s pleas to transport their feverish child to hospital. This was after four earlier trips to the hospital in which doctors didn’t help the boy’s fever, vomiting and crying. Writing later on the matter, Toronto Sun columnist Michelle Mandel called the Canadian healthcare system “a shameful, tragic mess.”

• In August 2003, a coroner’s investigation revealed that paramedics in Burlington, Ont. mistakenly administered morphine, instead of adrenaline, to a dying seven-year-old boy. In the boy’s particular case, the morphine slowed breathing and caused a drop in blood pressure, as well as unconsciousness. This could have led to his death.

• In September 2003, a television documentary entitled Bloody Disgrace contradicted the federal government’s claims that nothing could have been done prior to 1986 to curb the spread of Hepatitis C through tainted blood. In fact, U.S. blood experts – with whom Canadian experts worked closely – as early as 1981 were recommending donated blood undergo tests to indicate the likely presence of the virus.

• In May 2004, a third First Nations family was actually mailed the remains of their miscarried baby. Provincial Health Minister George Smitherman said he was “angered and deeply concerned” at the way “human tissue” was being handled.

• Also that month, a former male nurse at Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital was arrested on child pornography charges. Scott Faichnie also had photos of patients in his possession.

• Again in May 2004, Saskatchewan’s College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed a physician to review the deaths of 88 people who had been treated at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital. The 88 had not been seen within times set by national guidelines and died within 48 hours.

• Also the same month, a Winnipeg man said he was told to lie on a waiting room floor while experiencing heart palpitations at his city’s Grace General Hospital. Stephen Fielding said he was told he would have to lie on the floor because no stretchers were available.

• Also the same month, a Winnipeg woman said she endured a two-and-a-half-year nightmare as she tried to learn how and why her 86-year-oldmother died in a city hospital. Apparently, Manitoba’s privacy laws prevented her from finding out what went wrong in her mother’s treatment.

• Also the same month, Calgary dental surgeon Dr. Douglas Vincelli agreed to pay $3 million to a patient immobilized by chronic pain after he treated her about a decade earlier.

• And also the same month, a Toronto Star article reported that many Ontario nursing home residents die each year from abuse and neglect – including broken bones, oozing bedsores, medical errors, over-medication and untreated constipation. The provincial coroner had not held even one inquest scrutinizing the inadequate care that ultimately kills some elderly.

• In June 2004, a 69-year-old Red Deer, Alta. man died after receiving the wrong painkilling medication. Three months earlier, two Calgary patients died after being given the wrong medications during dialysis treatments.

• Also in June 2004, Windsor, Ont. residents were complaining that their doctors were cherrypicking patients by shutting out those with chronic illnesses and denying basic care. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario said there are no guidelines, moral obligations or laws against physicians selectively choosing whom they will treat.

• The same month, a Montreal doctor said “dirty hospitals” were to blame for a huge increase in a potentially deadly type of diarrhea that killed as many as 79 people over a period of a year and a half.

• The same month, disgusted relatives pulled stroke victim Christina Jackson out of Victoria, B.C.’s Royal Jubilee Hospital after she was placed in a storage closet. Hospital officials characterized the move as “a creative solution to an ongoing bed shortage.”

• In July 2004, the first study of its kind in Canada found that five per cent of 2,000 chest-pain patients rushed to two Vancouver hospitals were discharged inappropriately by doctors who had misdiagnosed them. Heart attacks and unstable angina were commonly missed by the physicians.

• Also in July 2004, three Health Canada scientists were fired for daring to criticize their department’s drug approval policies. The three said they were often pressured to approve unsafe veterinary drugs.

• The same month, a Windsor, Ont. couple was left in shock after their two-year-old son died at home following what was described as “simple day surgery” to remove his tonsils and adenoids.

• The same month, it was discovered that London, Ont. doctor Tenzin Rabgey, who committed suicide, had hundreds of thousands of child porn images on his computers.

• In August 2004, a B.C. woman died in a White Rock hospital after what the family alleged was hospital bureaucracy. The woman’s uncle, who had rushed her to the hospital, was told, “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to call an ambulance … that’s our policy, sir.”

• Also in August 2004, an Emergency Care Task Force in Winnipeg identified the need to “look at all our processes … look at the whole system” after a string of high-profile tragedies in the city’s hospitals. They included the death of a woman who perished from a heart attack after waiting in the emergency room for six hours.

• The same month, the Canadian practice of reusing single-use medical devices was being described as “still common” and “routine.” A medical device manufacturers association described the results of such practices as “disastrous” and said patients were being exposed to needless risks on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the Canadian Medical Association Journal said Canadian hospitals were in the “dark ages” when it came to containing sometimes-fatal bacteria in their midst.

• In September 2004, two B.C. parents accused the medical system of failing them after their six-year-old daughter died because of a diagnosis of a bacterial infection that came too late.

• In October 2004, the Peter Lougheed Centre hospital in Calgary discarded a woman’s miscarried baby into a trash compactor. The baby’s remains had been left sitting in a plastic bag on an emergency room counter before the disposal.

• The same month, it was reported that young children in Saskatchewan can literally have to wait years for surgery within their home province.

• In November 2004, a mixup at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre left a premature baby’s body at the hospital for two weeks as the baby’s family buried only the placenta and fetal membranes, thinking they were the baby’s body.

• The same month, a study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine reported that Canadian heart attack victims are dying because crowded emergency rooms are leading to life-threatening delays in the administration of clot-clearing drugs.

• In December 2004, police investigated the disappearance of a 17-week-old stillborn baby from St. Catharines General Hospital in Ontario. The hospital said after a search it had “somehow” lost the 1.7-ounce, 15-centimetre baby.

• In January 2005, a study reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that dozens of children leave hospital emergency departments every day without being seen by a doctor because of overcrowding and lengthy waits for care.

• Also in January 2005, Hamilton grandmother Joanne Blais laid for two-and-a-half days on an uncomfortable stretcher in Henderson General Hospital’s emergency department, sometimes in her own vomit, before being diagnosed with a brain tumour. According to news reports, her story didn’t shock the chief of emergency medicine at Hamilton Health Sciences, who said patients are commonly lined in hallways.

• In May 2005, four doctors were found guilty of negligence in the death of a Stoney Creek, Ont. woman and were held liable for an award of $186,000. A Superior Court judge said the actions of the four “fell below the standard of skill and care that is reasonably expected of a normal, prudent medical practitioner.”

• The Canadian Blood Services agency and Hamilton hospitals in June 2005 refused to discuss a case of tampering that had occurred with records kept on blood given at Hamilton blood donor clinics. The tampering had sparked a massive recall of blood products by the agency two months earlier.

• The same month, staff at Kelowna General Hospital in B.C. refused to treat an unconscious man who had been brought to their site and instead told his transporter to call 911 and wait for an ambulance. Three years earlier, a woman who collapsed just metres from the hospital’s emergency room doors had also been told to wait for an ambulance.

• Also in June 2005, the Canadian Union of Public Employees charged hospitals “are becoming an increasingly unsafe environment” because of “bugs that are growing more virulent.” In April 2005, 19 people in Port Colborne, Ont. and Welland, Ont. hospitals tested positive for bacteria resistant to antibiotics, while a Kingston hospital in June 2005 reported 30 such cases – some with active infections. A strain of C. difficile bacteria infected 7,000 people, killing 600 of them, in Quebec in the months following April 2003.

• Again in June 2005, Newfoundland doctor Sean Buckingham was hit with eight more criminal charges, including one of uttering threats, for a total of 30 charges in a “sex-for-pills” operation. A second physician, Boyd Goodyear, faced a charge of sexual assault.

• The same month, Ontario’s chief coroner ordered a review of Toronto pathologist Dr. Charles Smith, who was accused of mishandling 40 autopsies involving the suspicious deaths of children.

• In facing a charge of conduct unbecoming a doctor, laid by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Windsor, Ont.-area physician Nicholas Rathe admitted in August 2005 that he verbally abused his patients, calling them names and swearing at them.

• In September 2005, two nurses pleaded guilty to professional misconduct in the death of a 10-year-old girl at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. The two admitted they did not adequately monitor the girl, nor did they correctly document her care or condition. A coroner’s inquest had earlier ruled the death a homicide.

• In May of this year, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein predicted that the rear end of his successor “will pucker” when he sees the amount that is being spent on health care and by how much that figure is escalating every year. It is expected that healthcare will gobble up 60 per cent of the provincial budget by 2025.

• A June 2006 Hamilton Spectator article asked the question: “How can hospitals stop killing people?” It noted 9,000-24,000 patients are killed by errors every year in Canada, with hundreds alone in the Hamilton Health Sciences system.

Health Canada announced in July of this year that X-ray induced cancers are killing up to 2,500 Canadians a year, while procedures that use X-rays to guide thin tubes and other devices into blood vessels and arteries have not been tested for radiation safety. Researchers also report that chest X-rays may double or triple the risk of breast cancer in women genetically predisposed to the disease.