opinion: to my patients, your turn for the vaccine is coming
please, when your opportunity for immunization arises, take it, whichever vaccine it is and no matter who administers it.
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chui ping seto gives the thumbs up after receiving her vaccine from ottawa public health at the the albion-heatherington recreation centre in ottawa on friday, march 5.
tony caldwell
/
postmedia
by: dr. nili kaplan-myrth
it has been a year since the covid-19 pandemic began. we are all tired, all struggling – as health-care providers, teachers, grocers and other essential workers – but as much as we would like to focus on good news, our public health units warn us that we are facing a third wave, another surge over the next few weeks.
as a family doctor in ottawa, i reached out last march to talk about the impact of the pandemic on our community and on primary care. i’ve spoken on radio, written articles , and advocated on social media, to address gaps and challenges in our health-care system. early in the pandemic, the mpp for ottawa centre, joel harding, invited me to participate in a town hall meeting about supports for primary care (we were without personal protective equipment and without financial support at the time).
last month, i organized a roundtable discussion for canadian health-care workers and community advocates to speak with prime minister justin trudeau and minister of health patty hajdu about vaccine rollout. if you haven’t had a chance yet, take a moment to watch it here:
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we are all looking to the covid-19 vaccine as a way out of this challenging time. vaccine rollout, however, raises a slew of questions. across the country – from large urban hospitals in edmonton, winnipeg and montreal, to inner-city toronto and vancouver shelters, to rural family medicine clinics in brighton or dartmouth, and to remote nursing outposts in pangnirtuuq and fort simpson – the question on our minds is: who is the priority for their jab and how will it be delivered?
health, as we know, is a provincial/territorial mandate. vaccination strategies therefore vary from one region to another (even within a province or territory), exacerbating geographic, racial, socio-economic and other disparities in access to health care across canada.
as primary care providers, family doctors have trusting relationships with our patients; we are the ones you turn to with your questions, we immunize everyone from infants to seniors, and we are angry that we were excluded from decision-making tables and strategic task forces. despite the roadblocks, we continue to advocate strongly for you.
this past weekend, i helped to immunize people in ottawa who are over the age of 80 and live in designated high-risk neighbourhoods. this week, i am going back into retirement homes to give residents their booster doses. the teams of family doctors doing this agreed that we would do so without receiving our own vaccines, even as we watched our colleagues in hospitals rolling up their sleeves. however, i know that in our city there will be an online registration system for all health-care providers and other high-risk essential workers so they can get their vaccines.
before you throw down the paper or yell at your computer screen, “but when am i going to get my vaccine?” i am writing to reiterate that – although we are not impressed with how this has rolled out chaotically and unevenly across canada, and we are going to keep speaking out about health-care disparities – the bottom line is this: your turn will come.
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the other message i want my patients to hear is this: please, when your opportunity to get the covid-19 vaccine arises, take it, whichever vaccine it is and no matter who administers it (even if it isn’t your own doctor or nurse practitioner). keep an eye out over the next weeks for updates from your public health unit about when/how to register for your vaccine.
the final message i want to leave you with is this: one of the few silver linings of the pandemic is that incredible health-care experts and community advocates across the country have banded together, without political partisanship, driven by a shared sense of urgency. even if we are all exhausted, demoralized and frustrated with rhetoric expressing the sentiment “we’re in this together,” we can’t stop trying to work together.
those of us who are out in the community, taking care of seniors, raising our own children, caring for patients and family members, advocating for people with disabilities, working in shelters, lobbying our politicians – we know that our voices carry further as a chorus than as individuals.
dr. nili kaplan-myrth, md ccfp phd, is a family doctor and anthropologist. she writes about health policy and politics and co-hosts rxadvocacy.ca. twitter: @nilikm
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