Mt. Sinai staff outraged as board jumps H1N1 queueNovember 6, 2009
Theresa Boyle, Denise Balkissoon, Robert Benzie Staff Reporters
Unionized staff at Mount Sinai Hospital are calling for the resignation of its board of directors after members were given early H1N1 vaccinations meant to be reserved for health workers and those at high risk of complications.
"What we are seeing evokes scenes from the Titanic, the privileged pushing to the front and leaving vulnerable women and children to a chilling fate," said Sharleen Stewart, President of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1. "This was a serious ethical lapse by the board and the CEO and a profound error of judgment by the chairman. The chair is left with no choice but to resign."
On Oct. 26, the first day that H1N1 shots were available in Ontario, 65 members of Mount Sinai's board got their shots. Only 15 have health conditions that make them high risk. Even before the vaccine shortage was announced on Oct. 28, public clinics weren't scheduled to begin in Toronto until a week after the board was vaccinated.
"At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do," said Dr. Donald Low, medical director of Ontario's public health laboratories and chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai. Low, who made the decision to vaccinate the group, says that before the shortage, the goal of high-risk clinics was to reduce wait times for vulnerable people, and there was no line at the hospital that day.
Mount Sinai, which has since given 8,000 shots, had a large quantity of vaccines. Making it clear that the first shots were for priority groups, provincial and city health officials urged the healthy public to wait their turn for the shot, but indicated they would not be seeking proof of high-priority status. "If you had come in, I would have given it to you," Low said.
Low said polls at the time indicated that most Ontarians didn't want the H1N1 inoculation. But when Durham region opened the first GTA mass vaccination clinics that same day, Oct. 26, there were immediately long lineups.
"I'm sorry this has happened," said Low. The doctor says hospital CEO Joseph Mapa has not indicated he will face any repercussions.
On Mount Sinai's website, a notice on Friday said that suggestions that board members received the shot "in advance of public access to the inoculation are unfounded."
The president of St. Michael's Hospital told CBC that giving flu shots to board members is no different than giving them to other hospital workers.
"We need people on the phones; we need people keeping the lights on; we need people volunteering to do tasks that we don't have staff to do – and our board members are part of that volunteer group," Bob Howard said. They had debated whether they were frontline healthcare workers or administrators and had decided on the latter, he said.
That conflicts with the definition according to Dr. Vivek Goel, president of the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, which oversees the province's response to the pandemic. Last week, she and Dr. Brian Schwartz, director of emergency management for the agency, told the Star's editorial board that it was not appropriate even for themselves to get the shot. A media photo opportunity had been planned where they would get the vaccine, but it was cancelled at the last minute because of the "optics," Goel told the editorial board.
At Queen's Park, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is also calling for disciplinary action against doctors who allow people to jump the line. "We want to see a full accounting of every single vaccination that's gone out the door inappropriately," she told reporters Friday. Horwath said the latest allegations of queue jumping prove more must be done to ensure priority groups get their shots first.
Asked whether Low should face disciplinary action, Horwath said: "This is where I think the College of Physicians and Surgeons comes in in terms of taking a look at why physicians are not following protocols that are set out by public health and by the ministry."
As for Mount Sinai board members, she said "it's disconcerting that the board would make that decision and they need to take a hard look at why they felt that that was an appropriate decision to take."
Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews is already investigating whether pro athletes in Toronto jumped the queue in getting the H1N1 shot.
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