Poverty Activist Physician Threatened with Loss of License (Canada)

[Hannah Bell]

Dr. Roland Wong is under threat of losing his license to practice medicine. He didn’t harm anyone. He helped people on social assistance get extra money for food. The average Ontario welfare recipient gets $500 per month. The special dietary allowance program provided extra benefits of up to $250 per month to enable those with medical conditions to purchase more healthful food. An estimated 20 percent of people on social assistance rely on these extra benefits.

Wong, who specializes in occupation and community medicine, admits to completing about 15,000 special dietary allowance forms in one year. He not only signed forms for his own patients, he also signed them for people attending mass clinics arranged by anti-poverty activists...

Conservative city councilor Robert Ford, who is running for mayor of Toronto in October, filed a complaint against Wong with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The College must now investigate whether Wong engaged in conduct that “would reasonably be regarded by members as disgraceful, dishonorable or unprofessional.” Ford insists, “A doctor is there to be a doctor, not to advocate for the poor…You can’t have people in the medical field doing that.”

Wong views the complaint against him as politically-motivated harassment... At an April 6 public meeting and a July rally he protested government policies that promote homelessness, starvation, sickness and premature death in the richest province in Canada. “Income level is the best predictor of health,” he said...Wong points out that cuts to social assistance in the mid-1990s saved the province $2 billion dollars, while the special dietary allowance restores only 10 percent of what was lost.

With regard to the charges against him, he stated, “I don’t know what will happen. But whatever happens to me, I will be happy because I’ve done something useful.”

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/09/should-physicians-be-activists/

Video of Wong presentation here:

http://vimeo.com/10830778

[HillbillyBob]

1. MMM since when is good nutrition and concern about it

against medical ethics..did some of our teabaggies escape?

[Hannah Bell]

2. no, canada has plenty of home-grown ones.

[formercia]

4. The Harper Government in action

all this was no accident.

First they came for the disabled......

[tblue37]

3. Wow. Just wow:

Ford insists, “A doctor is there to be a doctor, not to advocate for the poor…You can’t have people in the medical field doing that.”

What is the world coming to? Doctors who advocate for the poor? For heaven's sake! Won't somebody think of the children?

[DCKit]

5. "...there to be a doctor, not to advocate for the poor..."

Holy Shit. The definition of "Compassionate Conservative".

[bobbolink]

6. Too bad we don't have doctors like this in the US... or even "progressives" who would do some

advocating.

I hope Dr. Wong decides to relocate to this country.... many of us would welcome him with open arms!