Health Minister Adrian Dix should resign or be fired, the B.C. Liberals said, in light of the death of a patient who spent two days on a stretcher in an overcrowded and understaffed North Vancouver hospital waiting room.
“It’s a disaster. We have a crisis in health care, there’s no doubt about that,” said B.C. Liberal finance critic Peter Milobar. “And the only one that doesn’t seem to really want to acknowledge that is the health minister, shockingly enough.”
Milobar pointed out that after a patient died waiting in a Fredericton emergency department last week, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs fired the province’s health minister and head of the health authority.
Postmedia News learned about the death on Monday and was told Dix was unavailable for an interview all week. Efforts were still underway Friday to connect with the minister.
Multiple emergency rooms in rural hospitals have been forced to temporarily close this spring and summer due to a shortage of staff. And there have been at least three incidents in the span of a year in which people lost their lives waiting for emergency care
