Mr. Speaker, this morning I had the opportunity, along with a constituent of mine, to visit the Stanton Hospital as one of our elderly people was brought in from the region to receive medical care at this hospital. This elderly lady is in her 90s and I’ve watched these dedicated staff up there, the nurses, take care of her. As she was lying there -- me and my constituent were talking -- I had a vision there in the hospital, Mr. Speaker, in terms of wouldn’t it be nice if we had this type of facility in the Sahtu where we could bring our elderly people into the Sahtu region rather than fly all the way to Inuvik or to Yellowknife.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the nurses in the hospital that they do take very good care of our elderly people while they are in these facilities. However, because of the way things are, you have a dedicated group of nurses that are dedicated to the care of our people here. I thought, well, wouldn’t it be nice to have this type of facility in the Sahtu where you have a group of dedicated professionals to look after our elderly people in the Sahtu region. I know there is a time when we’re going to have further discussions on this. Actually, I phoned the chair of our Sahtu health board and I asked him, is this regional wellness centre or a hospital or whatever you call it, is it still a priority of the regional board members. He said, yes, it’s still a priority.
I’m asking the Minister here if she could take some time to discuss with her staff and have a dedicated person to sit down with the regional health board members and look at options as to how we could fund a regional wellness centre. Certainly they have done it with the Dementia Centre, they have done it with the primary consolidated health clinics in Yellowknife, and they have looked at other avenues in terms of how they can get support from the other hospitals. We are asking for that in the Sahtu region. There are over 250 elders in the Sahtu region and sooner or later a lot of them are going to be needing care like this lady in the hospital. Again, I’m pleading to the department and this government to see if they could put in a regional wellness hospital centre in the Sahtu region. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for the Deh Cho, Mr. McLeod.
