OTTAWA | A prisoner of a deformed body for more than 60 years, thalidomide survivor Jeanne d’Arc Otis never thought Ottawa would refuse to compensate her without even looking at her.
“Does it sound like doing things like that to people who are broken?” I’m completely broken, ”she rages, a stump in place of an arm and another in place of a leg.
Mme Otis was born in 1958, with all four deformed limbs, twisted spine and pelvis, a hole in her spinal cord and many other malformations that made her life a real ordeal.
When she was born, the horrified obstetrician immediately asked her mother if she had taken any medication during the pregnancy. Her father, unable to look at her, wanted to place her for adoption. He would have preferred a dead baby to be placed in his arms.
The lady is now fighting to receive compensation under the Canadian Thalidomide Survivors Support Program (PCSST).
She never received a penny from the various federal compensation programs for survivors of the infamous pill that Health Canada negligently let into the country without ensuring its safety.
It was distributed to pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s to relieve nausea.
An algorithm
When Ottawa introduced the TSCP in 2019, Ms.me Otis hoped to finally be compensated. But that was without counting the way the government would process the applications.
Mme Otis couldn’t speak to anyone. She hasn’t seen any doctors. Not even a simple official laid eyes on her. It is an algorithm that sorts the beneficiaries. And, for him, the lady of Beauport is not a victim of thalidomide.
ValiDATE is a diagnostic algorithm that determines “the likelihood that a person’s injuries were the result of maternal ingestion of thalidomide,” the government says. He believes that M.me Otis is an “unlikely”.
“There is bodily harm similar to that caused by thalidomide, but which is attributable to other causes,” the lady wrote in a letter seen by The newspaper.
Mme Otis, however, provided a damning report from the specialized clinic for thalidomide victims of the Montreal Rehabilitation Institute which describes in detail each of his malformations.
Whatever. The lady is denied federal compensation of $250,000 in addition to an annual allowance intended to help thalidomide survivors in their daily lives.
Help
A sum that would soften his end of life, and that of his spouse and caregiver, after 64 years of suffering.
“I would need help, my husband would need help, I would like to enjoy life a bit,” she breathes.
She explains that her heavy handicap makes her more dependent on her husband every day. However, the couple can only afford the support of a housekeeper, three meager hours a week.
The Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ), which has never questioned her condition, pays for her medical care, but she would need so many other things.
To demonstrate beyond any doubt that she is indeed a thalidomide survivor, Ms.me Otis would need his mother’s prescription. But she never existed: the pills had been given to her as a sample in a doctor’s office, she says.
“We would have to pay a geneticist to demonstrate that it was thalidomide that did this to me, but we don’t have the means,” explains the lady.
The citizen does not even have a family doctor who could help her in a fight against the federal machine. A fight that a mere look would avoid, she said.
“All the doctors who see me say I am a thalidomide child, even the eye doctor, rage Mme Otis from his wheelchair. What more does it take them? »
6 decades of broken lives
- 1956 | Market launch of thalidomide in West Germany
- 1961 | Official release in Canada
- 1961 | Withdrawn in West Germany and the UK
- 1962 | Withdrawn from the Canadian market
- 1963 | Canada pledges to compensate victims
“It is incumbent on us to ensure that these (thalidomide) victims receive the best care possible, to provide for their needs as much as possible and to do everything in our power to prevent ‘such a tragedy could happen again’ — JW Monteith, Canadian Minister of Health and Welfare, January 29, 1963
- 1987 | The War Amps of Canada create a task force to support victims’ efforts. We are asking for more than $20 million to compensate and help on a daily basis
- 2014 | The government offers $7.5 million
- 2015 | Canada announces permanent financial assistance for 90 victims
- 2019 | New federal aid program improving the previous one