NDP Labour critic Peter Kormos wants the McGuinty Liberals to act immediately to protect healthcare workers from future pandemics.

“Nurses and other health care workers put their lives on the line to save others during SARS. They continue to do so every day. This government owes it to these courageous workers to do everything it can to ensure their safety,” said Kormos.

The Niagara Centre MPP is calling for immediate action to make properly fitted N-95 respirators – safety masks that help reduce transmission of airborne diseases – mandatory and available to all front line health care workers.

In yesterday’s final report from the SARS Commission, Justice Archie Campbell blasted the McGuinty Liberals for failing to protect the lives of front-line hospital workers who were in close contact with SARS patients: “Although Ontario law required, since 1993, that anyone using an N-95 had to be properly trained and fit tested to ensure full protection, few hospitals complied with this law and some even denied its existence. Fit testing … became a lightning rod for all the underlying problems of worker safety in hospitals.”

Despite the outcry during and after SARS, the McGuinty Liberals have not made N-95 masks universal in Ontario hospitals, said Kormos. “The McGuinty government’s laissez-faire approach to safety continues to put workers at grave risk.”

In addition to airborne diseases like SARS and avian flu, health care workers are also at risk of being contaminated by blood-borne diseases because the McGuinty Liberals refuse to bring in safer needles. “Nurses and doctors are at risk of acquiring HIV and other highly contagious blood-borne diseases, even though safety-engineered retractable needles are available. The McGuinty Liberals simply refuse to make these needles mandatory in our hospitals,” said Kormos.

Campbell wrote, “When it comes to worker safety in hospitals we should be driven by the precautionary principle that reasonable steps to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty. Until this precautionary principle is fully recognized, mandated and enforced in Ontario’s hospitals, workers will continue to be at risk.”

“I’m calling on the McGuinty Liberals to make safe N-95 masks and safer needles mandatory today. The technology is out there. All it takes is the will to put worker safety first,” said Kormos.