Labour Ministry Won’t Be Shut Out of Health Crises After SARS Tragedy: Peters

TORONTO (CP) – Ontario’s Liberal government insists infighting between the ministries of Health and Labour during the deadly SARS crisis in 2003 won’t happen again.

A commission into the SARS outbreak found the Health Ministry blocked efforts by Labour to become involved, even though health-care workers were becoming infected. Labour Minister Steve Peters vows his ministry won’t be shut out again in any future health care crisis.

Peters says the government has learned lessons from the SARS tragedy, and pointed out Labour Ministry officials now sit on the province’s infectious disease advisory committee.

The final report released today by Justice Archie Campbell suggests Labour play a lead role in future infectious outbreaks in hospitals to ensure high priority for workplace safety.

Campbell’s report says the ministry was effectively sidelined during SARS, which claimed 44 lives during the spring of 2003.

Forty-five per cent of Ontario’s 375 SARS cases were health-care workers, including two nurses and a doctor who died from the mysterious illness.

Hospitals are as dangerous a place to work as mines and factories, the report concludes.