Comment: Yes, Virginia, we will lose more of our doctors if Virginia allows uranium mining!
Demand our state to ban uranium mining now!
Doctors agree to hold off on resignations
Last Updated: Friday, December 11, 2009 |
7:30 PM ET CBC News
Dr. Alain Poirier, Quebec's chief public health officer, speaks to reporters in Sept-Îles. (CBC)Quebec will create a special committee to study the potential effects of uranium exploration and mining on public health, says the province’s chief public health officer Dr. Alain Poirier.
Poirier made the announcement Friday, following a meeting with a group of 23 doctors in the province’s North Shore region.
The doctors at the Sept-Îles Hospital have threatened to resign unless the province puts in place a ban on uranium mining and exploration, which they said is a threat to public health.
"We agreed to look at all the options and not just only to think if one day there will be a mine — but what are the effects now on the population," Poirier said.
"There must be a public debate [on the issue]," Imbeault said.
Officials at the Sept-Îles Hospital have said the loss of the doctors in a region that is already struggling with a shortage of health-care workers would be "catastrophic."
But the hospital administration had said it supports the doctors in their concern for the public’s health.
Exploration done by the Terra Ventures Inc. in the Lake Kachiwiss area north of Sept-Îles has confirmed the presence of uranium oxide.
Quebec’s Junior Natural Resources Minister Serge Simard said no mining project in the region would be approved without the support of the local population.
Read more at:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/12/11/uranium-committee-sept-iles.html
