Portage woman blasts NDP gov’t over lack of MRI machine at local hospital

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A Portage la Prairie woman says her frustration with the NDP government has reached a boiling point as both her and her husband continue to face cancer scares while waiting for MRIs, and the province says a MRI machine is not needed in their community.

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“You can’t say you are a listening government, and then turn around and say ‘we don’t need a MRI in Portage,’ when in the whole of Manitoba there are 24,000 people waiting for MRIs,” 63-year-old Judy Jeffries said on Monday.

“Excuse me, but who is fooling who here?”

When Manitoba’s previous PC government announced in 2021 that a brand new $455 million health-care centre would be built in Portage la Prairie, the PCs said at the time statistics did not support bringing a MRI machine to the facility, which is currently under construction, and expected to open in 2025.

In recent weeks and months there have been growing calls in the area for a MRI to be built at the new facility, both from frontline health care workers and residents, but last week Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara confirmed to media there are currently no immediate plan for a MRI in Portage.

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Judy and her 75-year-old husband Dave Jeffries are long-time owners of the Jeffries Brothers Vegetable Growers farm located in the RM of Portage la Prairie, just outside the city limits.

According to Judy, her husband had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from one of his kidneys late last year, and was supposed to have a MRI every three months after the surgery to monitor if the cancer had returned.

But she said after one MRI, done soon after the surgery, her husband has not been able to have one scheduled since, despite how important it is that doctors monitor his health after his first cancer diagnosis.

“Every three months they were scheduled, but we have heard absolutely nothing,” she said. “And the monitoring part of this is so important, if the cancer has returned it can be spreading, so the sooner you catch these things the better.

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“It’s a matter of life and death.”

Judy and Dave are now feeling even more anxiety after Dave was recently told by a doctor that a CT scan found a spot on his kidney, and that doctors don’t know if it is related to scar tissue, or if the cancer has returned.

“And they won’t know until they do a MRI, and now apparently it is scheduled, but again we have heard absolutely nothing,” Judy said.

Judy said about a year ago she started having seizures, and her doctor would like to test to see if they might be related to brain cancer, but also does not know when she can get a MRI done.

“The first thing you want to do is rule out if the seizures are being caused by a tumor, but again it’s been a year since the doctor ordered it, and again we have heard nothing,” she said.

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“It’s very, very hard mentally, we are sitting here now at the point where we don’t know if my husband’s cancer has come back, or do I have cancer?”

According to the most recent provincial statistics, there are currently 23,642 Manitobans on an official MRI wait list in the province.

Doctors in Portage la Prairie are also calling on the province to include a MRI in the new hospital.

A letter signed by 35 area doctors was sent to Premier Wab Kinew earlier this month calling the absence of the technology a “glaring omission” in a facility that will service Portage, as well as several neighbouring First Nations communities.

“Our patient population faces many health inequities, and we worry that not having the foresight to include a MRI scanner will only exacerbate these inequities,” the letter states.

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“While our hospital is now under construction, now is the time to rectify this oversight.”

Jeff Bereza, the PC MLA for Portage la Prairie, said in a July 5 media release he initially agreed with the previous government’s decision not to include a MRI, but says after speaking with local doctors he now believes one is needed.

“I agreed with the government’s decision at the time because of information that there are only about 3,000 patients from this area needing MRIs each year, which would only support about a 50% usage of a MRI machine,” Bereza said.

Bereza said several doctors in the area have explained to him that the figure of 3,000 images is based on the number of completed scans, but does not include cancelled MRIs due to social or economic barriers, poor travel conditions or other reasons.

“New information that’s recently come to light tells a much different story,” Bereza said.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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