SOME elective surgeries at both Canberra Hospital and Calvary Public Hospital Bruce will be postponed in the coming days as Health Services face staff shortages due to covid, other illnesses and leave.
“The ACT health system is experiencing extremely high demand this week, as we care for record numbers of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients in our public hospitals,” said a Canberra Health Services (CHS) spokesperson.
“This is having a significant impact on our capacity at Canberra Hospital and Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, so we’d like to remind Canberrans to keep our emergency departments for emergencies.”
Canberra Health Services is recommending Canberrans see their GP, visit a Walk-in Centre or call CALMS, the National Home Doctor Service or HealthDirect for non-urgent health care.
“We want to acknowledge all our health care workers who continue to care for our community in the face of these challenges,” said the spokesperson.
“Please remember that our team members are doing their best to keep us all safe, and being kind and respectful is the best way you can help them.”
Walk-in Centre wait times are available on the CHS website.
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![Teacher Vanessa Jones has been living in Higgins since 2001, and while she loves the area, she says she is “fed up” with the neglectful ACT government.
The Higgins shops have been completely abandoned, says Vanessa, preventing the opportunity for residents to have a community-centred space to socialise.
They only received bins nine months ago, she says, and requests for a water station and repairs to the bus station have gone unanswered.
“It’s very, very slow,” says Vanessa.
“I asked for the zebra crossing on Fullagar [Crescent] to be repainted, and we had to wait about six or nine months.
“That’s just such a long time… we pay a lot of rates.”
Vanessa says assistance from the government only seems to go to communities with time-rich and assertive communities, leaving places such as Higgins, where the majority of households have both adults working full-time and English may not be the first language of the family, at an automatic disadvantage.
“If you’ve got two people working, paying a mortgage, raising two or three kids, they don’t have the time,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.
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