Dozens rally at Mission Memorial Hospital over ER closures

Dozens rallied outside Mission Memorial Hospital over the weekend, sounding the alarm on repeated emergency room closures.

A few dozen community members gathered outside Mission Memorial Hospital Saturday morning to demand action in response to repeated emergency room closures and show their support for health-care workers dealing with staff shortages.

Opposition Conservative MLA Reann Gasper, who represents the Abbotsford–Mission electoral district, organized the rally.

“We are in a health-care crisis right across British Columbia,” she told CTV News.

“Mission isn’t the worst of it, but, you know, I am representing this community.”

The Mission Memorial ER has been closed six times so far this year, most recently last Sunday night, Nov. 9, when patients were diverted to other Lower Mainland hospitals from 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. the following morning.

There were also no doctors available at the Mission Memorial ER on Halloween night.

The emergency room is supposed to be open 24 hours a day.

“When an ER is closed, that sends a ripple effect of fear through a community,” Gasper said.

Emergency rooms across B.C. have been dealing with overnight closures and other “temporary service interruptions” for years, with rural and remote communities in the Interior and the north often hit the hardest.

The provincial government and the regional health authorities have launched recruitment and retention campaigns in hopes of stabilizing staffing levels, but so far, the closures have persisted.

Gasper recently wrote to Health Minister Josie Osborne and Fraser Health leadership to demand more action from the government to address the issue. She’s calling for increased staffing support and greater transparency in public reporting of ER closures.

Saturday’s rally also featured a petition for community members to sign.