Canada: Hospital Won't Help Set Up HIV Clinic

On Tuesday, Guelph General Hospital's board of commissioners passed a motion to support a regional HIV/AIDS clinic in principle, while rejecting a request to sponsor it. Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik, a Guelph family physician and HIV specialist, last month asked the hospital to sponsor the clinic. An institutional sponsorship would have allowed Ontario's Ministry of Health to channel funds to the clinic.

"Without complete information and not knowing what the Ministry of Health would require of us, we cannot sponsor the clinic," said hospital CEO Richard Ernst.

The proposed regional clinic is modeled after a similar facility in Windsor. Ernst said that in contacting the Windsor clinic and hospital to learn more about how they operate, he discovered "it's effectively a department of the hospital." Given the cost-cutting underway at provincial hospitals, Ernst said GGH cannot add a department.

"Without [the hospital's] sponsorship, I can't even submit a proposal to the Ministry of Health," Zajdlik said. She insisted there would be no cost to the hospital and that it could benefit from the presence of medical specialists.

As the region's sole HIV specialist, Zajdlik sees 76 HIV/AIDS patients, and that number grows by 5-10 every year. Afraid that caseload would burn her out, Zajdlik invested nearly seven months in trying to create a regional clinic.

Zajdlik partnered with the local Community Care Access Centre, health unit, AIDS committee, and agencies in Dufferin, Waterloo Region, and Grey and Bruce counties. The Ministry of Health gave her assistance with planning and proposal writing. And four doctors, two nurses, a secretary, and pharmacist are "ready to go," she said, adding that after initially approaching GGH in April, she had expected "this to be a rubber stamp thing. Now there are all these red flags. I really don't understand it."

Back to other news for October 29, 2004