Government 'must be made accountable' for isotope shortage: CMA president
8/19/2009
SASKATOON — Canada’s Conservative government has mishandled the medical isotopes file, the Canadian Medical Association’s outgoing president says.
“The federal government didn’t play the role it should have played there,” Dr. Robert Ouellet said Wednesday, after the association passed numerous motions prodding the government to dive back into the isotope business.
“There was a warning a year-and-a-half ago when the Chalk River reactor went wrong. They didn’t provide any views on what will come in the future. And this reactor is 53 years old.”
The government’s decisions on reactors have been made “for financial reasons,” Ouellet charges, and did not fully consider the effects on patient care.
The association demanded Wednesday that the federal government retain a leading role in providing medical isotopes for the world, and reconsider a decision to back away from isotope production.
Delegates at the CMA’s annual meeting in Saskatoon passed five motions they hope will help turn around a shortage of medical radioisotopes for diagnostic tests.
The anger and worry about the government’s handling of the nuclear reactor shutdown in Chalk River, Ont., and subsequently cancelled medical tests was palpable from doctors who spoke at the meeting.
“The federal government must be made accountable for this,” Ouellet told delegates.
“They lacked foresight, and of course right now there’s a shortage, and there will be additional costs for everyone.”
One passed motion expressed appreciation and admiration for the health-care workers across the country who have been trying to serve patients during the isotope shortage, declaring the CMA is “deeply troubled that the prolonged and unpredictable shortage of medical isotopes continues to compromise patient care.”
The CMA is also now demanding the government appoint an international expert panel to review the decision to abandon Chalk River’s Maple I and II research reactors, which were to have replaced the troubled National Research Universal (NRU) reactor. The NRU, which is currently shut down until at least early 2010 due to a heavy water leak, supplied one-third of the world’s isotopes for nuclear medical tests.
The isotope shortage has forced the cancellation of thousands of medical tests across the country.
Dr. Yolande Leduc told delegates she can’t understand why the government is backing away from isotope production.
“I’m also concerned Canada will be abandoning patients around the world,” the Quebec doctor said.
“I’m standing up to tell the federal government they don’t make sense.”
Doctors are also demanding the government conduct “open, meaningful and ongoing consultations with nuclear medicine physicians” and their associations on all federal decisions affecting the supply of medical isotopes.
They’re also calling for the government to create an emergency action plan for covering the increasing costs of isotopes during the shortage.
If provinces can’t track down medical isotopes, that’s one thing, Ouellet said. But if a province can’t get isotopes because it can’t afford the skyrocketing cost, “now the federal government is responsible for that and should pay.”
Physicians voted overwhelmingly in favour of calling on governments to ramp up the use of positron emission technology (a three-dimensional imaging technique that uses radiopharmaceuticals), and to “immediately invest heavily” in researching alternative production methods to the isotope technetium-99m, the isotope currently in short supply, and also in researching alternative isotopes that could be used in medical tests.
“This is a step to move us forward and to obtain the best care for our patients as possible,” the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine’s Dr. Christopher O’Brien said of the move to beef up PET technology.
By Janet French, Saskatoon StarPhoenix
