Nuclear medicine specialists and
CMA president Dr Brian Day have praised Parliament for
emergency legislation passed unanimously December 12
to allow the temporarily closed Chalk River, Ontario,
nuclear power plant to resume producing the radioisotopes
used in diagnostic imaging.
At its peak, the shortage of radioisotopes
affected 85% of hospitals in North America and caused
countless medical procedures to be postponed across
the country.
The plant was closed for nearly
a month for safety repairs, but the government decided
the benefits of restarting production outweighed any
safety risks. "There will be no nuclear accident," decreed
Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Dr Day and the Canadian Society
of Nuclear Medicine (CSNM) said in a release they are
"very pleased" with the swift resolution, but stressed
that any interruption in the supply of isotopes must
be averted in the future. "[Canadians] deserve to know
why there was no prior notice [of the closure] to the
end users so that they could have mitigated the medical
impact," said Dr Day.
Dr Day's frustration with the lack
of warning has been echoed by Liberal Natural Resources
Critic Omar Alghabra, who has accused Health Minister
Tony Clement and Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn
of trying to disavow their failure to act on the matter
more quickly.
The December 12 legislation named
the CMA and CSNM to an expert advisory group to "assess
the extent, severity and the implications of the shortage,
as well as [provide] medical advice on alternate diagnostic
products."
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