Ethicist says denying medical service based on where someone lives is 'ignorant'

People in Saskatchewan's far north are reporting being turned away by certain medical practitioners in southern Saskatchewan simply because of where they're coming from. Most of the province's active COVID-19 cases are in the far north region, which covers around half of the province. 

Arthur Schafer, founding director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, said if places had decided to remain closed outright and not serve anyone, that's OK from an ethical standpoint because that way there's no discrimination. But that's not what's happening. Some medical practitioners, like optometrists, dentists and physiotherapists are currently open and taking patients. Schafer said you can't pick and choose.

"I think that what we're seeing is a unilateral, selfish and ignorant refusal on the part of healthcare practitioners to deliver the services to which residents of the north are entitled," he said. 

People in the Saskatchewan's far north are allowed to travel south for medical appointments, even if the appointments are not "urgent".

A statement from the provincial Ministry of Health Friday said medical and health appointments "should go ahead as scheduled."

CBC is aware of this happening to people at optometrists, physiotherapists, orthodontists and dentists. Some have had their existing appointments cancelled, while others tried to book and were turned down at multiple locations after the business found out where they were coming from.

"Their colleagues ... in hospitals and at healthcare centres throughout the province are treating patients who are infected and they're refusing to treat patients for whom there's no evidence they're infected," he said. 

"I don't buy it," Schafer added. "It doesn't pass the smell test and frankly it seems unprofessional, and I think there ought to be clear instructions from the professional associations that govern each of these healthcare professionals to their members that such discrimination is not acceptable."

Schafer also said it's concerning that people in northern Saskatchewan are seemingly being refused treatment because the population there is largely Indigenous.

"It looks as if it's discrimination against Indigenous people in Saskatchewan," he said. "This is just one more brick in a rather ugly wall."

Schafer said he knows it's important to be careful and that every healthcare professional and anyone who visits them should be taking the necessary precautions like physically distancing in the waiting room and wearing a mask.

"As more facts have emerged, it doesn't look as if this has anything to do with public health and has everything to do with irrational prejudice against particular groups of people, which is illegitimate."