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In 1988 the road to Oberammergau was quiet.
It wasn't one of the Passion Play years.
As we bicycled through the bucolic countryside I
remember thinking how much more isolated it was than most of the other Bavarian
villages.
The people of Oberammergau are convinced that their village
was spared from the plague in the Middle Ages because God chose not to send them
His punishing pestilence for some reason.
I suspect it is more likely that the village was so far out
of the way that anyone who was sick died long before they arrived and the villagers
themselves must have been self sufficient enough that they didn't need to
travel elsewhere.
Which brings me, oddly enough, to the Niagara Health Care
system.
We have a problem here.
People are still dying of C. difficile and as of today two
health care workers have also gotten sick.
Worse still a new superbug has appeared.
This year, the Niagara Health Care shut down the emergency trauma centres in the smaller communities.
The will of politicians on a cost cutting
mission, not the people.
A giant new hospital is set to open in Niagara in 2012.
We're going big instead of small.
And that worries me.
I have a feeling that if we don't get the lesson of Oberammergau,
we're going to see more and more of these outbreaks and not just in Niagara.
Race you to the cliff?
Race you to the cliff?
2 comments:
Great post, Francie. In industrialized healthcare, patients are expected to be patient, uninvolved in their own care except to accept what is provided, without complaint. Quick turnover and efficiency are the objectives.
Thanks, Doug.
I feel as if the canary died here in Niagara and nobody is paying attention.
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