By Catherine Hacksel
As the weather warms and quarantine restrictions ease, health-care providers continue to track, trace, and treat COVID-19 across the city of Ottawa. After initially pursuing hotel accommodations, Ottawa Inner City Health (OICH) was given space at our local Routhier Community Centre to serve homeless residents requiring medical isolation for the COVID-19 virus.
It officially launched service Monday March 23, twelve days after Ottawa Public Health confirmed COVID-19 had reached the Capital. Symptom advisories and limited PPE were shared among emergency shelters, and the OICH’s mental health van was repurposed for mobile COVID testing.
While local partnerships and flexible program development are hallmarks of the non-profit organization, a spacious public facility is an unusual service backdrop. OICH has largely grown within snug social services, beginning with bedside care for adult emergency-shelter clients nearly twenty years ago. This service is now the Diane Morrison Hospice, where I currently work frontline.
Before lockdown fades from our collective consciousness, this is a critical time to reflect on the challenges this situation starkly presented. Social determinants of health can have harsh and deadly outcomes, with no silver bullet. How can we responsively and responsibly engage with one another, while ensuring no one gets left behind?