We are barely entering 2022 and what is still on the front page: vaccination, health measures, confinement, curfew. The Quebec health system recalls the Titanic. While the previously mentioned topics have an important role to play in containing the pandemic, but today I am disappointed that, not once in the many press conferences, has our government mentioned any intention that it is to rely on health promotion and prevention to give air to our essential workers, who need it all too much.
On several occasions, you have observed, like me, among the avalanches of statistics presented to us, that a very large number of deaths and hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic concern people with co-morbidities. In those commonly mentioned, there is obesity, hypertension, type II diabetes, dyslipidemia and high cholesterol which recur more often than in turn. Along with mental health problems and chronic inflammatory diseases, these pathologies force the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) to spend billions of dollars each year on drugs and pharmaceutical treatments for pathologies which, as we have known since. now over 20 years old, can often be controlled by adopting healthy lifestyle habits.
I still do not understand why we do not have any financial support program for the adoption of an active lifestyle or a healthy diet (apart from consultations with nutritionists), access to resources for stress management and sleep hygiene. No tax credit for the purchase of equipment or membership in physical activities, no government programs or subsidies to support better access to quality food when, in 2022, ready meals, soft drinks and junk foods are even more accessible than unprocessed foods.
At no time do we speak of relying on kinesiologists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, naturopaths, personal trainers, various coaches, osteopaths, as well as several other health professionals that I forget, to try to collaborate in interdisciplinary terms with doctors, nurses, orderlies, nutritionists, psychologists and social workers, who can no longer take it. No support from the RAMQ for access to parallel services or supervision to help people adopt a new lifestyle.
It is time to get out of the bottomless hole created by a “bobo paunch” system and take a proactive health stance and begin a broad transition to a prevention-based system. I’m talking about creating consultation groups with professionals from ALL spheres of health in order to take advantage of everyone’s strengths.
Of course, we will still need surgeries, vaccines and medicine. However, it is imperative to gradually increase the contribution of the preventive in order to decrease the extremely costly needs of a dysfunctional system which focuses only on the curative. I grant you, it will certainly be necessary to devote the means to achieve it, but this must be seen as an investment.
My dream is for our nation to choose to become a world leader in health prevention. Quebec would have a golden opportunity to stand out positively.