Fear of racism deters many Indigenous people from seeking medical treatment, says health-care leader
CBC Radio · Posted: Nov 27, 2020
[Excerpt] Indigenous Canadians are avoiding going to the doctor or seeking urgent care in hospitals, says the president of The Indigenous Physicians Association.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact, but there’s also another equally invisible and potentially deadly factor: racism.
“People are fearing that they will be treated in a racist manner, or not receive the standard of care that a non-Indigenous person would,” Dr. Cornelia (Nel) Wieman, told Dr. Brian Goldman.
The death of Joyce Echaquan was a wake-up call to the kind of inequity that Indigenous people face as patients in the health-care system, says Wieman, who is also a psychiatrist and senior medical officer at the First Nations Health Authority in Vancouver
Wieman spoke with Goldman, about the Indigenous community’s fear of the health-care system, and her own experiences as an Indigenous doctor and health-care leader.
To read the entire article, click on: Fear of racism deters many Indigenous people from seeking medical treatment, says health-care leader
