Today the Manitoba Government and Prairie Mountain Health announced that the Grandview Health Centre in is being temporarily closed and all staff from the Health Centre are being redeployed to work in the Grandview Personal Care Home, where there is a COVID-19 outbreak. In response, MGEU President, Michelle Gawronsky has issued the following statement:
The province neglected rural hospitals to the point that they were struggling even before the pandemic. And now, this is what health care has come to in Manitoba - closing a hospital in the middle of a pandemic because staff are needed elsewhere. We are looking for reassurances from the province that the closure is temporary, and that the people of the Grandview area will get their hospital back after the pandemic crisis.
We know health care workers in Grandview are already stretched to the max, and are both physically and emotionally drained. Now they are being sent into a care home with a COVID-19 outbreak.
We call on the province and the RHA to ensure health care workers have full medical PPE before they are sent into an outbreak situation; the same as any paramedic being sent into the very same area. This includes N95 masks, gloves, gowns, booties, and face shields when caring for COVID positive residents. Eight months into a pandemic, this essential safety gear shouldn’t even be in question, but we have already seen health workers forced to go without in other Prairie Mountain facilities and have filed a grievance on this issue. We need the employer to act now.