The patient-led B.C. Health Care Matters rally kicked off outside the legislature Thursday while politicians debated the matter inside.
“So it’s gone from a little trickle to a tsunami of patients who just don’t have a family doctor to look after them and it has an impact in so many ways,” Hoogewerf said in an interview.
The rally drew about 1,000 people the the legislature, many carrying signs reading “Everyone Deserves a Family Doctor.” Many in the crowd were family doctors and nurses from the Island and Lower Mainland.
Camille Currie, the founder of B.C. Health Care Matters, which is now morphing into Canada Pacific Health Care Matters Society, started the organization in February after learning she would lose her physician at Eagle Creek Medical Clinic in View Royal in April.
She has since whipped up support from doctors, nurses and people both without a family doctor and those in fear of losing one, and the organization’s main petition, presented in the legislature by health critic Shirley Bond, has more than 42,000 signatures.
