By Hazel Smith, Bruce Peninsula Press
Around for more than one hundred years, x-ray technology might not pique the same donor interest as an MRI machine or brain-computer interfaces, but just because it’s been around a long time doesn’t mean that it has lost significance.
The x-ray machine remains the first line of defence in day to day diagnostic practice. This is borne out by the data: at the Lion’s Head Hospital there are over 2,000 x-rays performed annually and triple that number at the Wiarton Hospital. Most patients who end up in the ER or are admitted will at some point receive an x-ray. It’s the invaluable workhorse – available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
At fifteen years old our current x-ray equipment isn’t what it used to be. Think about your 2006 cell phone and you’ll understand the urgent need for an upgrade. It’s crucial that x-rays taken in hospitals in rural communities like ours are comparable to images taken in urban settings. Besides allowing for frontline diagnosis, high quality information equips local doctors to consult with counterparts and specialists in bigger care centres.
Given that less than 20 percent of Canadians live rurally, we, on the Bruce Saugeen, are in the minority. Making the decision in favour of the forest, field and shoreline, we make do without certain other things, like public transportation, big box stores, a bevy of cuisine options, and night classes.
But no one wants to pass on quality health care. Yet it is generally recognized that rural Canadians experience greater health challenges, in part because we have a higher aging population and rural income is typically lower. The median age on the northern Bruce is 60.4 years compared to 41.3 years for Ontario as a whole. Median income is more than 12 percent lower than Ontario as a whole.
The Canada Health Act (1985) recognizes that access to quality health care without financial or other barriers is critical to maintaining and improving the health and well-being of Canadians. It also recognizes that future improvements in health require cooperative partnerships between governments, health professionals, voluntary organizations and individual Canadians.
What does that mean?
On one level, it simply means we should try to live healthy lives; make healthy choices so we don’t ‘unnecessarily’ tax health care services. It also means that we as Canadians must do more for our health care services than simply pay our taxes. It certainly means that community organisations like the Tobermory Health Services Auxiliary are essential to our well-being.
The current Bruce Peninsula Hospitals Foundation campaign to buy two new x-ray machines, one each for the Lion’s Head and Wiarton hospitals, makes the local responsibility explicit when it states that, “provincial funding for hospital upgrades is essentially non-existent. As a result, Bruce Peninsula Hospitals Foundation must approach local individuals, businesses and of course municipal governments in our fund-raising efforts.”
After almost two years of Covid enforced hiatus the Tobermory Health Services Auxiliary ended 2021 with a very healthy $5,000 donation to the x-ray campaign. The donation comes from existing funds that have been built through past fundraising drives, private donations and bequests.
Given our small population and income disparity, it is nothing short of heroic what our community and Auxiliary has done to shoulder the voluntary and individual component of the partnership
The Auxiliary, with Directors Rob Davis, Dawn Harpur, Jace Weir, and Judy Willson, also provides ongoing support to the “clinic” building and grounds in Tobermory, the doctors’ residence and the hyperbaric chamber. Speaking on behalf of the Directors, Jace Weir, explains the basic mission of the health auxiliary is to focus on our family health team and to provide equipment they need to operate optimally to promote healthy living in the community.
Grey Bruce Health Services as a corporation has made an arrangement to buy in bulk six x-ray machines at a cost of $500,010 each. That boils down to raising a staggering million dollars plus for the two machines for the Bruce Peninsula. April Patry, Executive Director of the Bruce Peninsula Hospitals Foundation, says, “yes, it’s true”, that zero dollars have been allocated from federal or provincial funds. These machines are being paid for 100 percent locally.
Patry acknowledges the massive contribution over many years by the Tobermory Health Services Auxiliary with support mostly to the Lion’s Head hospital and Tobermory clinic. The group, she says, “has been hard working in service to Northern Bruce Peninsula patient care. It’s very impressive.” Weir says, “the Auxiliary believes it’s crucial to keep quality health care as local as possible.” Like the rest of us, the Auxiliary looks forward to post-pandemic times, being able to meet in person again, revitalize, and reconnect face to face in the community.
Patry hopes the x-ray fundraising campaign will meet its million dollar goal by spring. It currently sits at about the 75% mark.
