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Expect things 'to continue to be difficult' in Quebec health care, Dubé warns

"The 811 system works quite well. We just don't have the personnel to answer the phones."

Citing the growing number of influenza cases in the province, Health Minister Christian Dubé is urging Quebecers who have not already done so to get their flu shot.
Citing the growing number of influenza cases in the province, Health Minister Christian Dubé is urging Quebecers who have not already done so to get their flu shot. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal Gazette files

The situation in Quebec’s health-care network will “continue to be difficult” over the next few weeks, provincial Health Minister Christian Dubé warned on Thursday.

Dubé also asked the province’s nurses to lend a hand to the 811 Info-Santé health information line, which received 10,000 calls on Wednesday alone.

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“The 811 system works quite well,” Dubé told reporters in Quebec City. “We just don’t have the personnel to answer the phones.”

Dubé asked retired nurses or those employed in private agencies to help out at the information line for the next few weeks. The minister said he was in need of 5,000 nurses to do that job.

Citing the growing number of influenza cases in the province, Dubé urged Quebecers who have not already done so to get their flu shot, which for the time being is offered free of charge in the province.

The minister also asked parents with sick children to keep them at home, given that 120,000 children have already been reported sick in the province’s classrooms.

During question period in the National Assembly, Liberal health critic André Fortin criticized Dubé’s performance as health minister, adding that once again the province’s emergency rooms were overflowing.

“In Repentigny this morning, the ER was at 181 per cent occupation, in Sorel 194 per cent, in Buckingham 208 per cent, and in Mont-Laurier it was 300 per cent,” said Fortin, adding that 1,500 Quebecers a day were leaving ERs without having seen a physician.

“This is a failure on the part of the health minister,” he said.

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