HAMILTON, Ont. — Specialized hospital beds for burn patients are in short supply across Canada, and the tragedy at CFB Wainwright in Alberta has placed a spotlight on the reality facing those in need of life-saving care.
“We don’t have enough beds right now across the country,” shares Dr. Marc Jeschke, director of the burn program at Hamilton Health Sciences.
As of Tuesday, there were 33 members of Canada’s military still in hospital following the deadly inferno at CFB Wainwright on Saturday.
Dr. Jeschke tells CTV News that there are 46 specialized beds for burn patients spread across 17 Canadian hospitals. Twenty-four can be found in Ontario, another 16 are in Alberta.
However, there are currently 19 injured soldiers listed as being in critical condition. While some ICU beds can be used to treat some burn victims, the simple math outlines that there’s a shortage of beds.
“It’s not just this one event, you also have the other burns that occur in house fires and other incidents,” says Dr. Jeschke.
Officials at Hamilton Health Sciences as well as Canada’s largest burn centre at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre have offered to receive some of the CFB Wainwright victims.
“Our hospital leadership as well as the province of Ontario have offered to take in patients from Alberta, if they can get them to us. We’ve also offered to send expertise (to Alberta). We are on standby to help anyway we can,” says Dr. Alan Rogers, a surgeon at Sunnybrook hospital.
Doctors who spoke to CTV News also note that trauma due to severe burns is unlike any other traumatic injury. Recovery can take months, even years.
“Some patients unfortunately get overwhelming infection, multi-organ failure, pneumonia and some unfortunately die,” shares Dr. Rogers.
“Someone suffering burns to 20 per cent of their body are often our sickest patients, they’re at high risk of infection and it takes a number of specialists to care for them and in many cases save their lives,” adds Dr. Jeschke.
Following this past weekend’s tragedy at CFB Wainwright, Dr. Jeschke says awareness of both the complications that come with burn injuries and the need for more infrastructure is paramount.
“A plane could crash, or a subway accident or a fire in a high-rise building with multiple patients, these things happen. What happened in Alberta isn’t a one and done incident. It will happen again,” says Dr. Jeschke, who believes that “we as a nation need to work towards a plan on how we handle this situation in the future.”
