Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, we do have a situation in the Northwest Territories with a lot of people who are heavily overweight, and my question to the Minister of Health is: What current programs are available to people that are looking to assist themselves in losing weight?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Other than counselling, other types of things including the people like the physicians themselves, dietitians, psychiatrists, mental health counsellors, nutritionists, internal medicine services and those types of things. We don’t have any other type of program. We are working with, I believe it’s the Alberta Health Services. They are willing to provide some of the modules they use to address the issue of morbid obesity.
I was part of that program and the Alberta program and their demand is very high. I think they have kind of limited the amount of use that we have on their program. I’d like to ask the Minister, has the Department of Health in the past funded weight loss programs such as lap bands or gastric bypass programs?
There is no indication that Health and Social Services has funded the laparoscopic adjustment band surgery in the past. What I do know is it is not an insured service in the NWT.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he would commit to looking into the funding of lap bands surgery to help those people who are morbidly obese.
Interestingly enough, I believe that there is an actual cost benefit to this type of surgery in the system. As the Member indicated, all of the reduction in medications and healthier life for individuals and everything, I believe that there is a cost benefit to this type of thing. Weighing those options, I would look into what it would take to see if the system can take a serious look at the laparoscopic adjustment band surgery.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to also see if the Minister would commit to looking into setting up criteria of who is eligible, along with a complete weight loss program similar to other jurisdictions such as he indicated, in Alberta. Can we have a matching type of program that will assist our people in the Northwest Territories to have healthy living?
I think we can do that. Since 63 percent of the population of the Northwest Territories considers themselves to be overweight or are considered to be overweight, we couldn’t do everyone, so I would say that we would have to have some other indication that these individuals would be eligible should this ever become part of our system.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
