It's no secret that there has been an ongoing crisis at the Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH), with the hospital infrastructure bursting at its seams and unable to provide the standard of care that Surrey residents deserve.
Health Minister Adrian Dix acknowledged the overcrowding situation at Surrey's busiest hospital as a "chronic issue." That's after a series of advocacy efforts and doctors penning several letters over the last few weeks, raising the alarm about the lack of patient care at the hospital.
The latest letter says the Fraser Health Authority and Health Ministry's management has not provided tangible support for overstretched emergency rooms. And despite Minister Dix saying that efforts are underway to improve services that will ease the burden at the hospital, there has been yet another shocking story that has come out of the hospital.
/>According to media reports, on Sunday, a pregnant woman gave birth to her baby in her car after being turned away from the hospital on the pretext that what she was experiencing wasn't labour pain. Doctors at the SMH gave her morphine and told her to go home and wait.
The baby and mother are doing fine, but the woman says no one should ever experience what she experienced.