Today I come to the House and I got a call last night regarding one of my elders in the community of Tuk having to wait. This individual, she’s an elder, she’s over 60 years old. She has TB and cancer. She’s been waiting to leave our community of Tuk on a scheduled flight to Inuvik to get a blood transfusion. The plane was cancelled due to not enough passengers the first day. The next day they get a call from the health centre stating the airline called and said they’re not coming into the community again due to the passengers weren’t there, so they didn’t come in again. She finally made it out of the community two days later. To me that’s not acceptable. Who draws the line in regards to medevacs? This lady should have been medevaced out of the community and into Inuvik to get proper care and attention.

Another thing in regards to the medevac contract, when it comes up, policies and procedures should be looked at from the Department of Health and Social Services at the time of the contract being awarded again. This is not only Tuk. This is also my other communities that are having the same problem. Who decides who gets medevacced out of the community? This is an elder. This is just not right. Unacceptable. At the appropriate time I’ll have questions for the Health Minister.