CanadaRetirement Living Submitted by szadmin on Wed, 10/05/2011 - 08:00
Browsing our Museum of Civilization’s time-line series, you can’t help but think that the ‘perfect conditions’ meteorologist Bob Case described to author S. Junger, who was researching a book about a real-life hurricane, is eerily similar of what happened between 1914 and 1918 in our own country to help create health care reform.
Canada faced extraordinary circumstances from four different situations. Each was overwhelming, combined they formed a ‘perfect storm’. The consequences forced ordinary Canadians to demand change.
Looking back, 1914, Canada was a colony in the British Empire, population approximately 7.5 million, many of whom were recent immigrants. Alberta and Saskatchewan were the newest provinces created in 1905; Newfoundland was still a separate colony. Canada had 8 medical schools with 1,792 students in all--321 doctors graduated that year and the majority went into private practice as general practitioners.
Four ‘perfect storm’ conditions converged.
WW1 exposed the poor health condition of our citizens!
That same year Britain declared war on Germany and doctors here discovered numerous health problems as Canadians enlisted (active tuberculosis, bad teeth, sexually transmitted infections). They also found many recruits unfit for duty because of past childhood ailments (infectious diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, measles).
These findings, plus earlier reports of high maternal and infant death rates in our cities, launched calls for a national preventive services health department to be created to ease the problems of communicable diseases.
The conscription crisis forced compromise!
Winning the war was a priority for Conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden, thus he promised to maintain a field force of 500,000 soldiers and to supply food and munitions to the Allied forces.
But fewer men volunteered for overseas service as the war dragged on. Thus, in 1917, the government decided to introduce military conscription.
It became a controversial election issue and caused a split in the opposition Liberal Party led by Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The Borden government was forced into an alliance with some of the pro-conscription Liberals. One of the conditions the Liberals called for, so as to join a Union government led by Borden, was the formation of a federal health department.
The Halifax Explosion signalled our lack of emergency planning!
On December 6, 1917, once again the need for health-action was starkly revealed when the Halifax Explosion occurred. Two ships in the narrows of Halifax military harbour (one of the world’s greatest natural harbours) rubbed together, one carried explosives. The resulting flames caused a massive explosion and a huge tidal wave, all within 10 seconds! (This was the second biggest man-made explosion in history, the first is the bombing of Japan.)
1,963 died, 9,000 were injured and 25,000 became homeless as 2.5 kilometres were levelled. The situation worsened when a six-day blizzard hit immediately after the catastrophe. The “Shattered City” as it became informally known, urgently needed medical assistance, supplies and help. Canadians responded rapidly, but help came more swiftly from Massachusetts. (Halifax still sends Boston a Xmas tree every year in thanks for their support.)
At the same time, the services needed to deal with the orphans, the blind and the disabled from this disaster were also required for the 160,000 returning wounded servicemen.
As a result, the Department of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment was created in 1918 to run convalescent hospitals, sanatoria and homes, pay disability allowances, operate an artificial limb and surgical appliance factory, work with out-patients with tuberculosis, dental and mental health conditions, help servicemen find jobs, occupational therapy was pioneered in these hospitals....
Up until then, Canadians had been expected to pay for their own care or seek aid from municipal or provincial facilities. Now, for the first time, the federal government was helping fund health services.
An influenza pandemic revealed the limits of our system!
Then during the final battles in the spring of 1918, a new enemy appeared. ‘Spanish flu’ (a subtype of avian strain H1N1) attacked troops on both sides of the conflict. The disease quickly struck our troops overseas plus those in camps at home.
(Note: The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, between 50 and 100 million, about 3% of the world's population of 1.6 billion at that time, died of the disease making it the deadliest natural disaster in human history.)
The outbreak spread to our civilian population, killing many of our young adults between 20 and 45. Communities rallied to provide food, bedding, fuel and care to those ill, but the horrifying speed of the epidemic clearly highlighted our country’s need for more health care professionals, facilities and medical research.
The resulting loss of 50,000 of our young men and women to the flu in addition to the 60,000 war dead prompted Canadians to demand government action to protect up-coming generations from similar suffering.
Meanwhile: New political parties were being formed, such as the United Farmers of Alberta and the National Progressive Party, because of growing differences between urban and rural needs. Several of these new provincial parties supported public health measures that would improve access by all to health services.
The upshot: These 4 crises-driven factors contributed significantly to the establishment of our federal Department of Health in 1919!
**I’d like to acknowledge The Canadian Museum of Civilization (a fascinating educational website) for the information in this article, as I have extracted many of the researched parts almost verbatim from their excellent time line series. Visit my website to connect directly to Canadian Museum of Civilization’s complete story, ‘History of Health Care in Canada, 1914 to 2007’. View the Original article
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