Three days after filing her report on the many deaths that occurred in seniors’ residences at the start of the pandemic, coroner Géhane Kamel spoke to the press on Thursday to present her findings. Without blaming anyone, she denounces the failure of a system and the work in a vacuum.
“Our most vulnerable seniors have been in the blind spot of our governments. They have been in the blind spot of society, ”she decided after 69 days of hearings and listening to more than 200 witnesses, from bereaved families to the top of the state.
This disastrous blind spot was thus nourished by “the gap between the ministry and the field”.
Blind to the dramas unfolding in the CHSLDs of Quebec, the leaders could not act to limit the carnage of the first wave.
“The agility of the health system” must therefore increase, she insisted. The “countless number” of ministerial directives, sometimes changing from day to day, took “hours, even days” to be heard by employees on the front lines. “It’s not normal for doctors, citizens or employees to feel obliged to go through the media to get things moving. My message to the government: Find a way to speak with your land. »
The end of the claimed privacy
Among her 23 recommendations, Ms. Kamel believes in particular that the model of entirely private seniors’ centers belongs to the past. deplorable working conditions of the employees of these establishments. “It’s not normal that in non-contracted CHSLDs, there are people less well paid than at Tim Hortons,” was indignant alongside Géhane Kamel, assessor coroner Jacques Ramsay.
In the same way, “contracting” private CHSLDs by imposing the same standards as in the public sector would open up “a regulatory lens” to predict future tragedies.
As for the CHSLD Herron, symbol of the crisis, the coroner directly targeted “the chicanery” and the “lawyer’s letters” sent on both sides while patients died at the same time. “People have failed. Whether it is the owners, the CIUSSS or the ministry. It’s undeniable. People passed the ball. For the rest, I have no complaints as such, but there are certainly lessons to be learned. »
Géhane Kamel assures “to have been at the bottom of things” with his report without having been constrained by politics. “I have great hope that these recommendations will not end up on the shelf. This report must be the beginning of something to change the perspective we have of the care of our seniors in Quebec. I think it was heard. »
More details will follow.