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Canadians Comment on Medical-Isotope Shortage

18 November 2009

Health care workers, patients and experts have their say on video about the impact of the medical-isotope shortage as the Government of Canada prepares to release its Expert Review Panel report on November 30, 2009.

See video at: www.medicalisotopesolution.ca


Medical isotopes are an important diagnostic tool that allows physicians to better diagnose and treat a multitude of major diseases including cardiac and several types of cancers. Canada has been responsible for producing more than half of the medical isotopes in North America and anywhere from 30%-40% of the world's supply.

Provinces, health care workers and industry leaders across Canada have been working tirelessly to cope with the medical isotope crisis for almost six months now since the National Reactor Universal (NRU) shutdown in May 2009.

As such, experts, health care workers and patients  decided to come together to embark on a project to develop a video to capture the opinions and bring together a series of testimonials to communicate the impact of the isotope crisis on the world, our health care system and Canada's leadership role in the production of medical isotopes.

This project was designed to explain the isotope shortage in easy to understand language by putting faces to the crisis who could communicate effectively to Canadians the short term and long term impacts on Canada and the world should our Government choose unilaterally to give up Canada's leadership role in the production of medical isotopes.

Watch the video link to hear what some of them had to say about the on-going medical isotope shortage and the impact it is having on Canadians and the world.

 

--T.I. Meyer, Head of Strategic Planning and Communications, using USSS press release.