To the Editor,
There is no new multi-level care facility on the horizon in the Alberni Valley. Therefore we’re stuck forever with the existing residential care beds at Fir Park and Echo Villages and Rainbow Gardens, none being added since 1992. Rainbow Gardens wants to add a few cottages (assisted living) like those at 10th Avenue and Wallace.
There are no plans to add the eight acute-care beds at West Coast General Hospital for which the hospital was designed. And, to add insult to injury, local residential care placement is done by Island Health in Victoria, not in Port Alberni.
Lastly, we’re facing the prospect of our existing population getting older and more retirees moving here.
In my opinion, the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District hospital board is useless and so is Island Health insofar as the Alberni Valley is concerned.
For decades, local health matters were run locally. The hospital had its own board of directors and things went along relatively smoothly. Then some genius established first the Central Vancouver Island Health Authority and then the very expensive disaster now known as Island Health.
So now we have a crisis and nobody is doing anything about it except to offer a few Band-Aid solutions.
Richard Berg,
Port Alberni