Montreal woman in wheelchair wants clinics, hospitals to be more accessible

A Montreal woman with disabilities says she’s having trouble getting certain medical treatment in Quebec because some clinics and hospitals are not wheelchair accessible.

Diane States, who is wheelchair dependent, is asking for better accessibility at the doctor’s office.

States says because she’s in a wheelchair, she’s not getting proper care – like when she wants to go for a mammogram.

“They’re not seeing the big problem. And to say they’re working on it is just an excuse because there’s no action showing that anything’s changed. We’re 2022 and something should be different,” said States, a representative with the Royal Victoria Hospital’s Patients’ Committee.

RAPLIQ, a Quebec organization that assists people with disabilities, conducted two studies between 2014 and 2017 that found most clinics classified as “accessible” refused to take women with disabilities and urged them to go to hospitals.

Last year, RAPLIQ conducted the survey once more, this time including hospitals. The results were that more than half (52 per cent) refused those in wheelchairs.

“They are telling me that they don’t want to deal with women with disabilities because some of them are drooling. Some of them are shaking,” said Linda Gauthier, the president and co-founder of RAPLIQ.

“They pretend that they are not wheelchair accessible when you see that they are, or they say that it’s going to be complicated.”

Root of problem is staffing, not equipment: RAPLIQ

RAPLIQ says all mammography equipment in Quebec can be adjusted to the height of a wheelchair, provided the arms of the wheelchair are removable.

Gauthier, who is also wheelchair dependent, believes it’s the lack of knowledge and training of staff that’s at the root of the problem – not the equipment.

“You wouldn’t want your mother, yourself, that nobody with no limitation to die of a breast cancer, to have that bad treatment or not to have any treatment at all,” said Gauthier. “They deserve the same access to health services.

“We don’t want better treatments. We want to have equal treatment.”

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States says that lack of access can have serious health repercussions.

“The impact is if there’s a spot that could have been caught right away, it’s not caught. It develops into cancer and then it becomes mass cancer where it starts to spread,” said States.

Gauthier says the problem of inaccessibility and lack of adequate services is longstanding, spanning over a decade.

“I realized that it was pure discrimination, because sometimes the clinic itself was wheelchair accessible. So there was no reason,” she said.

Gauthier says RAPLIQ intends on continuing carrying out more studies until Quebec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services takes some real action to resolve the problem.