Open Letter: Strengthen Ontario’s Health System by Immediately Banning Medical Tourism and Rejecting For-Profit Plasma Collection

Posted on: August 4th, 2016 by webmaster

On behalf of Ontario’s registered nurses (RNs), nurse practitioners (NPs) and nursing students (BScN), the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) extends its warmest congratulations on your election as Ontario’s premier. As you know, RNAO is the professional body representing RNs, NPs and BScN students across the province.

Premier, we would also like to take this opportunity to call for two urgent actions to strengthen Ontario’s health system:

1) immediately banning medical tourism, and 2) rejecting for-profit plasma collection.

Nurses in all roles and sectors value access to health care as a human right and a public good rather than as a revenue-generating opportunity. Thus, for the sake of Ontarians, their health and their health system, we urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to protect our treasured publicly-funded, not-for-profit system by banning medical tourism experiments currently in progress in Toronto hospitals.

Read the entire letter on the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario web site.