Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I gave praise to those who were participating in the Stem Cell Challenge there and the swab program. I certainly think that more people, as I mentioned in my Member’s statement, should consider the Living Donor Program. I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what work has been done to date to bring forward a program for living donors. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I appreciated the Member’s statement on Stem Cell Challenge as well as the one from Mr. Abernethy. I would like to join them in encouraging everybody in Yellowknife to take the opportunity of this challenge and register and take steps into becoming a donor.
Second, the answer to the Member’s question, Mr. Speaker, the GNWT is part of the National Donor Registry System. We do participate in helping and assisting in that way. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, what type of public campaign or information awareness campaign does the GNWT provide for the citizens of the Northwest Territories here so they know they could consider this option? How are they approached on the particular subject? I have been made aware that most people don’t know anything about it. I would like to find out what the government is doing to make sure that it is available, whether people want to register for kidney donation or other types of matters, that they know where to go and what to do and how our government supports that. What does the government actually do to promote these things? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as the Member is aware, we are a small jurisdiction and our health care facility or system doesn’t do actual organ transplants or anything like that. This is the reason we work with a national body. We are part of the National Registry System. I believe we have a mechanism in place with personal directives as well as driver’s licence, but I need to confirm that, but I believe we are part of that process. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I am a realistic type of person, so by no means I was trying to assume that we were going to perform organ transplants here in the Northwest Territories or run the system by ourselves. It is more about making sure that it is available and available here in the North. We have had advocates return to the North, long-term Northerners who have come here and actually met with the Minister, that I am aware of, and certainly spoken to me about how important this is. One of the things that they keep highlighting is that it seems to be elsewhere but not here. The promotion of this opportunity is either non-existent or it is extremely low. That is kind of the point I am trying to raise here today. I would like to know what the Minister of Health and Social Services can do to help raise the awareness and sort of accessibility of these types of programs for individual citizens so they can take part in it. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman in question no longer lives here but he is an advocate for government’s action to encourage and promote and raise awareness on organ transplant and organ donation. In fact, he was quite surprised at how advanced our personal directive legislation was. He asked for a copy of that because that legislation goes further than other jurisdictions in terms of making options available through living will and personal directives so that people can make choices about whether or not they want to donate organs while they are able to make those decisions, and is not done in the traditional way which is done by way of a will. I think the gentleman was quite pleasantly surprised at the advanced stage we are in in the Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With all due respect, those are fantastic things. I don’t mean that they aren’t, but the fact is those tend to be the end of the road decisions that people are making. The fact is they tend to be the last minute when people don’t know what to do. I guess that is sort of the whole purpose of my set of questions today here, is the fact that the awareness of these types of things seems to continue to be significantly low and how important they are cannot be magnified enough, these gifts of life that we can provide other people, whether it is blood, a kidney, a lung and those types of things.
I am well aware of many cases where people have received organ transplants through the different donor programs. That is the whole issue that I am trying to raise here today. Will the Minister take the step by trying to raise the awareness of this initiative, what our government can do and certainly the network our government works with to make sure that people are registered and certainly a way or a direction so people can get more information on these types of initiatives? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I do agree with the Member that this and other initiatives or services or ideas that the government supports has to be made aware on an ongoing basis. When this personal directive, for example, first came out, there was lots of awareness raising, but I do take the Member’s point that it has to be continuous. The department is lending support to the Stem Cell Challenge for example. We will continue to do that. I take the Member’s point that we have to do that on an ongoing basis. I will get back to the Member on how we do that and how we could do this better. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
