Health Care gets $243 million funding boost

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The federal Liberals have made good on a promise made during the last election to help deal with health issues in Canada's Aboriginal communities.

The new health care strategy, Building Health Communities, will see $243 million pumped into Aboriginal health care during the next five years. This is an addition to the dollars currently being spent on Aboriginal health.

The strategy includes components to deal with mental health, solvent abuse and home care nursing as well as responding to priorities identified by individual First Nations and Innuit communities.

The dollars will see support for crisis intervention, after-care and rehabilitation, and training for caregivers and community members to deal with situations such as suicide.

The solvent abuse component of the strategy is targeted at youth and will support the development and delivery of early intervention activities, training, and the advancement of research.

Home care nursing targets co-ordinating on-reserve patient care to meet the needs of patients discharged from hospital and those with acute illness.

The announcement is good news for Aboriginal health, said Doris Ronnenberg, president of the Alberta Branch of the Native Council of Canada. Ronnenberg's organization is one of many Native groups seeking to turn Edmonton's Charles Camsell's Hospital into an Aboriginal healing centre.

Ronnenberg said she suspects the groups will attempt to woo some of the new federal health dollars to finance the programs at the hospital. The project will endeavour to combine traditional healing methods with conventional medicine to achieve a more holistic approach to healing Aboriginal people.

John Robson of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said it would be difficult to balance one area of need against another in distributing the new money. The current lack of services result in so much need in some communities, the fear is that once the money is divided up, it will not go far.