Parties make health-care promises

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This article was published 13/09/2011 (5521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NDP Leader Greg Selinger and Progressive Conservative Leader Hugh McFadyenboth promised to flow health-care dollars into Brandon while in the city yesterday.

At a late morning news conference staged across the street from the Brandon Regional Health Centre, Selinger pledged a $12-million renovation of the hospital’s medical ward, commonly known as the bed tower, including the expansion of 12 new medical beds.

“It will allow more patients to be served here, it will give greater privacy to the patients, better rooms, there will be additional staff to serve the patients and it will make for an even better health-care system in Brandon,” he said.

The specifics of which floors would get the extra beds and extra staff would be left up to the Brandon Regional Health Authority to decide, Selinger added.

“We’ll work with the RHA and the planners and the architects and the designers to do it the best way possible, for the advantage of patients,” he said. “Where it will be is where the medical professionals think it’s going to serve the best interests of patients in the Westman region.”

If elected, Selinger said the NDP would begin planning for the expansion in the next legislative term and pledged to have it complete within a four-year mandate of his government, “if at all possible.”

Selinger would not commit, however, to an expansion at the BRHC to facilitate a Brandon University-based medical school as part of his election campaign commitment to Brandon health care.

A feasibility study is currently being undertaken to determine whether such an idea will work to increase the number of rural-trained-and-based doctors in Manitoba, he stressed.

“I see a very important role for Brandon University in that process and we will work that out with Brandon University as well as the (University of Manitoba) medical school and the local community that are participating in that process,” he said. “We think Brandon can be a centre for training more physicians.”

McFadyen called Selinger’s promise for additional beds in Brandon 12 years too late, however his own health-care pledge for the Wheat City wasn’t far behind.

At a media conference Monday afternoon, he announced that a Tory government would fund a Brandon-based helicopter air ambulance that could serve families within a 250-kilometre radius of the Wheat City.

“This spring, a soldier was airlifted to Brandon from the heart of the flood fight in a (STARS) helicopter ambulance,” he said. “We want to make this access to a public helicopter ambulance permanent for all residents of Brandon and surrounding region for western Manitoba.”

In making the announcement, McFadyen rattled off a list of 15 communities across Manitoba — many of them in Westman — that have all seen their emergency rooms closed or services severely reduced under the NDP watch.

An air ambulance based in Brandon could alleviate emergencies in some of those communities.

“We have a lot of great industries in this part of Manitoba,” he said. “We see the oil drilling activity and we know how important and vibrant agriculture is and can be. We’ve got forestry and tourism and we need to know that, in the event of an accident or emergency, people will have the same access to emergency services that they used to have in the past and that they are entitled to as we look to the future.”

The helicopter would cost $5 million to establish in Brandon, with annual operating costs of between $1 million to $2 million, McFadyen said.

Though he was in town on Tuesday, Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard didn’t call any media conferences to make Brandon-specific campaign pledges.

» adowd@brandonsun.com