Since the outbreak began, the number of children waiting for surgery at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children has doubled.
Approximately 5,600 youngsters, the majority of whom are under the age of ten, are currently waiting in an operating room at SickKids.
An estimated 3,800 youngsters were waiting for surgery in March 2020, before the COVID-19 epidemic broke out.
SickKids officials were unavailable to speak with CP24 today, although they did confirm the above figures.
They also said that 61 per cent of scheduled surgeries at SickKids are now falling outside the recommended clinical window amid the backlog. That is compared to 35 per cent pre-pandemic.
Speaking with reporters during a media availability Friday morning, re-elected Premier Doug Ford said that children are “obviously” a priority when it comes to backlogged surgeries while noting that “other areas are a priority too.”
Ford then said off-hand that he believes the PC’s have committed to an investment of about $180 million to address the backlog in surgeries across the province.
“We’re gonna put money into that to make sure that we clear up the backlogged surgeries. And, hopefully by the end of this year coming we’ll have a good chunk of them, if not all of them, cleared up, so I’m told from the ministry,” he said. “We need to make sure that our operating rooms are going around the clock, MRIs are going around the clock, when possible.”
The Ontario Medical Association has previously estimated that the province’s surgical backlog stands at more than a million procedures.
It has called on the province to fund a new model of outpatient health-care centres to help tackle the backlog.
Source_ cp24.com
