Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to talk about the liberation treatment offered to MS patients throughout the world. I’m hoping that the Minister of Health and Social Services here today will hear the call for some type of action on this particular issue.
Liberation treatment is now offering new hope in a way that has never been seen before when it comes to MS patients out there. They’ve had drug therapy and certainly physiotherapy to keep their lives in some type of order, but it is a problem that is pointing in one direction. Liberation treatment has come forward and is offering a new style of promise to people who have not had hope before on stopping this disease.
I believe it’s time that our government take a serious look at this opportunity before us. If anything, as they say out there, it doesn’t work quite well or perfect on every single patient, but those who receive liberation treatment will tell you that it has changed their lives in a profound way, that it has returned the quality of their life back in a way that they never dreamt of before.
Saskatchewan is moving forward in a way to give this a full shot on giving the chances back to these people who have MS. Other provinces are seriously considering this. If we look at the cost alone just on liberation treatment, we’re talking in the range of $20,000 to $40,000 per treatment. The reality is, how do we compare that to the cost of drug therapy that they’re receiving today?
Through research I’ve found that a particular person who is on drug therapy specific to MS could be costing about $1,000 a month just on drug treatment. That’s about $12,000 a year just on treatment in their existing position. That doesn’t even consider the secondary protocols of drugs, such as to treat their depression, which could range anywhere into another $5,000 to $8,000. We could be spending almost $20,000 a year just on drug therapy that we could be saying, wait a minute, if we offer them any chance at hope, maybe they don’t need this MS drug therapy, maybe they don’t need the depression therapy because their lives have returned.
In short, this comes down to quality of life. If the government wants to do it on numbers alone, all we have to look at is drug therapy two years in a row would pay for the cost of treating someone through liberation treatment. But if we want to do it from the human point of view, the point of view that cares about people, cares about their outlook on life, that brings back promise to them, I think giving liberation treatment for those MS patients out there brings hope and certainly helps their outlook on life.
I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services later today regarding this matter. Hopefully we’ll have some good discussion.
