A few months ago, I wrote a letter that was published in this newspaper about the widespread presence of flies and ladybugs in the operating rooms of the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur in Montreal, regularly forcing the closure of operating rooms.
Now it’s Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital’s turn to make the headlines: on the evening of 29 April, its operating room and intensive care unit suffered a power outage of more than an hour.
The reason for this catastrophe? The generators didn’t work as planned when high winds hit. Fortunately, no surgery was in progress when this happened and, fortunately, no patients were made worse off as a result of the blackout.
This breakdown comes against the backdrop of the Quebec government’s announcement a few weeks ago that renovation and expansion work at the hospital, which was due to start this spring, would be postponed. The CAQ government defended itself by saying that there was already a lot of work to be done elsewhere in the network, which was taking up the planned budget. In short, the health establishments are withering away and it does not want to make the necessary investments to save the network.
Soon it will be the entire healthcare system that breaks down, a mortal victim of chronic underfunding and capitalist austerity. The consequences will be calamitous.
Ultimately, a system that fails to ensure the health of its population deserves to perish. To guarantee our survival, let’s fight for socialism.
– Hélène B., Montreal
