Today begins in Quebec City a three-day event to which more than 850 people are invited as well as many personalities from the health sector and civil society. This first edition of the Sustainable Health Summit allows me to address, once again, the importance that our health system should devote to prevention. We want to bring together voices from many backgrounds and disciplines to promote prevention and health promotion. Thus, defenders of collective health come together to jointly propose this first Summit.
Faced with the economic challenges that Quebec is currently facing, more particularly with regard to the financing of the health care system, it is imperative to reduce the pressure on the latter. Nevertheless, some people decide to continue to believe that we can save our health care system, in particular by focusing on the production of health, through prevention, instead of just managing the disease. There needs to be a culture change in this regard and it has to start now.
I said it last year and I have the impression that we will never say it enough: we must prioritize health, not disease!
We know that the health budget in Quebec is the largest of all budget sectors. Of this ratio, only 2.8% of the funds are intended for prevention. Quebec is far behind when compared to the other Canadian provinces which reserve an average of 5.5% of their budget for prevention.
Thus, waiting lists, lack of beds, exhausted staff, forced overtime are just a few examples of the harmful effects of focusing on illness rather than health. If we continue in the same direction without thinking about the overhaul of our healthcare system, as all the figures show, it will be an impossible mission.
The prevention of avoidable illnesses and injuries as well as the promotion of overall health are keystones to the survival of our system, but also a path to quality of life for all Quebecers. Not only are these functions essential for the problems we are currently experiencing, but they are also cost-effective and effective solutions for the growing problems linked in particular to social inequalities, the rise in chronic diseases associated with the aging of the population and climate change. Both individually and collectively, we do not have the luxury of leaving them in a corner.
Prevention must be placed at the heart of the Quebec health system, both inside and outside each institution. After all, the primary beneficiary of the return on the investment of prevention is the government, which will no longer have to assume as many costs of care in its budget and will be able to reap the benefits of a healthy population. This underfunding has arguably cost us lives and is currently costing us billions of dollars in preventable health conditions and suffering. Public health is indispensable and yet continually neglected. Why wouldn’t we collectively take the means to be and stay healthy through prevention?