Government continues to allow inexcusable medical information disclosure mistakes to happen on their watch, says Yvonne Jones, Leader of the Opposition.

Judge Cameron completed her inquiry into the breast cancer scandal over a month ago complete with recommendations to prevent the same mistakes from happening again.  Yet on late Friday afternoon, after most newsrooms were closed, Eastern Health issued a misleading press under an obscure headline.  This release casually mentioned 38 new patients that needed retesting and buried this critical information into the second page.

“Government had well over a year to deal with the issues but did nothing.  It is pure  political posturing in the face of yet another mismanaged health information disclosure. This government cannot be taken serious about dealing with the issues raised by the Inquiry until fundamental changes in management are made, starting at the top,” says Jones

“Government learned about this issue on Thursday past and discussed it at the Cabinet table. Instead of working closely with Eastern health to ensure that they communicated properly with the people affected, they did nothing. The minister went off to meetings in Nova Scotia and now they are reacting after we brought it to the floor of the House of Assembly.  This just isn’t good enough.  Again the minister dropped the ball. If they were so concerned why didn’t they ensure Eastern Health acted appropriately at that time, instead of waiting until it was too late?” says Jones.

The Premier responded to reporters saying that those at Eastern Health should be shot.