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Loading ...Canadian lesbian couple says doctor refused to treat them
01.30.2009 2:02pm EST
(Winnipeg, Manitoba) A Manitoba lesbian couple rejected by a family doctor from Egypt for religious reasons says Canada must better educate foreign-trained physicians.
Andrea Markowski said she and her partner Ginette were stunned when the Winnipeg doctor told them during a “meet-and-greet” appointment she was uncomfortable accepting them as patients and had never treated “people like you” before.The doctor said she only treated “husbands and wives,” said Markowski, who is legally married to her partner of 18 years.
“It was like a kick in the stomach,” said Markowski, who just moved to the city from the Northwest Territories. “It was definitely a traumatic and unexpected experience … She is a doctor who is paid with public funds.
“I have a really hard time understanding how her religion affects her ability to care for me as a human being.”
The couple has lodged a complaint with the province’s human rights commission and the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures no one can be denied health care on the grounds of sexual orientation, Markowski pointed out. The bodies regulating doctors in Canada must therefore take more responsibility to ensure foreign-trained physicians are ready to practise here, she added.
“We’ve stumbled upon a pretty serious problem and we want to make sure that it gets fixed. In some ways you feel a bit like a prisoner. There are so few doctors, it’s hard to see one, but they still are accountable to provide good service,” Markowski said.
“The College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manitoba and other places in Canada has to broaden the way that it assesses the skills - particularly of foreign doctors who may be coming from places where beliefs and norms are quite different – to make sure that they really are able to practise the physical, mental and emotional care of patients.”
Dr. Kamelia Elias did not return phone calls seeking comment. But she told the Winnipeg Free Press that she has no experience treating gays and lesbians who have “sexual problems” and “a lot of diseases and infections.”
“I said it’s better to find someone who has experience and will take this type of patients,” she told the newspaper.
Gay-rights organizations are calling for better programs specifically aimed at nipping prejudice in the bud.
The registrar of Manitoba’s physicians college said foreign-trained doctors do undergo an orientation before they can practise in the province. Bill Pope said doctors coming from other countries suffer from culture shock when they come to Canada. Some of them have never done a pelvic exam on a woman or put on a plastic cast, he said.
“How much of a change do you think it would be if you or I were put down somewhere in a Muslim Arabic country or Uzbekistan? It would be a shock,” Pope said. “We would hope that we would be forewarned about areas where we could potentially create problems without our knowing it.”
The province’s college has recently extended its orientation for foreign-trained doctors from one week to a month, he said. There is also some discussion of holding a session with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission so doctors get a briefing of the expectations of them under the charter.
The head of Canada’s gay-rights organization said transgendered people are sometimes denied health care. But Helen Kennedy with EGALE said this is the first instance she’s heard of involving a lesbian.
As the number of foreign-trained doctors in Canada increases, it’s incumbent upon colleges and the country’s Immigration Department to ensure they accept gay, lesbian and transgendered patients, she said.
“This is really sad. It really shows a bigger problem with people who are medically trained coming to Canada from other cultures. There is nothing in place to assist them to make the adjustment and to get the training that they need when they come here.”
Still others say all doctors would benefit from a better understanding of gay and lesbian health issues.
“All physicians need to get more training on this,” said Gens Hellquist, executive director of the Canadian Rainbow Health Coalition. “What little they get tends to be focused on HIV and AIDS, which is only one of the range of health issues.”
well, what did you expect? They have no queers in Egypt!
This COMPLETELY unexcusable!! I have an idea. How about Canada just denies idiot moslems from setting foot inside their borders!
The complaint against Dr. Elias is perefctly appropriate, a lawsuit seems more appropriate. I don’t give a damn about her “comfort level” she is there to provide treatment to ALL her patients, not only those she has cherry-picked. If she cannot bring herself to do sop, she should go practice some other country where they will pamper her sensibilities.
Why is that wherever Muslims go, trouble invariably follows?
As a natural born Canadian residing in one of the most progressive countries in the world, I am very ashamed that things like this still occur especially by someone who is supposedly educated in the medical profession. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, if you are a trained professional being paid by the public coffers, it is your responsibility to treat to the best of your ability, and if you are unable to do so, then you need to either educate yourself further or maybe seek out another profession if you feel what you are doing goes against your religious beliefs.
Of course this is completely unacceptable. The “doctor” should have been weeded out long before she saw any Canadian patient. It is obvious that virtually no discussion took place regarding Canadian health care standards. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim, when my husband had a brain tumour his Internist and anesthetist were both Muslim and they gave him the best of care and were completely respectful of our relationship. This is about bigotry and a complete failure of the Manitoba governments’ heath care bureaucracy to properly indoctrinate its medical personnel.
This woman should be fired and barred from praticing medicine in Canada. Perhaps Canada should try and figure out how to have more native born Candian Docotors. Scholorships ?
Is no one else as completely repulsed as I am reading the quote she gave to the newspaper: “… has no experience treating gays and lesbians who have “sexual problems” and “a lot of diseases and infections.””
Pray tell exactly what diseases and infections can a ‘Moe have that a Hetero does not?
Only treats “husbands and wives”??? So you will treat 1 wife, just not 2? How does any of this make any logical sense in healthcare or anywhere for that matter?
The whole nonsense really nauseates me!
Not to really be hateful but does that also mean that Muslim Doctors are not allowed to treat people of any sexual orientation who eat pork or drink alcohol? I say this because I remember hearing stories about Muslims who drive cabs won’t take fares that smell slightly of alcohol or touch any pork products in a grocery store when they work in same store.
Why would all these people come to Canada from these lands with antigay cultures to the land of gay marriage expect to be able to get away with such blatant discrimination?
Why do they come to Western lands any way if they can’t take the culture shock of a non Moslem world they are always condemning?
Must be the employment opportunities and the pay is maybe somewhat better in Canada than in much of the Muslim world, why else would they come to a country so contrary to what they grew up with?
a bigger, less crowded country and more moolah!
Ah, the smell of a better paycheck and of an easier life, powerful motivators!
I listened to the business report on Canadian TV in my hotel room in Halifax, Nova Scotia in mid November, 2008 and the business report had things to say Canada economically speaking was doing somewhat better than the USA and was doing the best of the worst off of the other Western democracies better that USA, Britain, Germany and the once wealthy island nation of Iceland which has gone through total meltdown with its jobs, banks, investments, government, many Icelandic people now not able to make their mortgage payments like in so much of the USA etc.(I have Canadian friends in Nova Scotia who are Canadian citizens and who lived in Canada all their lives so I can also ask them a few things about the current economic conditions in Canada)
And Canada so tolerant of non European type foreigners from Middle East and Asia, etc. So they come to Canada and they bring their own ways with them.
As a Westerner, hearing a doctor say she treats only married husbands and wives because that is how she practiced in Egypt and she is shocked when she is up against finding her patient likely getting very furious at being rejected due to lack of “family” status as this female doctor understands such to be and likely letting her know that she will be reported to a human rights tribunal.
All foreign doctors wanting to practice in Canada should be retrained to Canadian medical standards and be on probationary period to make sure that they understand that they must adhere to Canadian medical ethics and standards, must treat all patients and do so respectfully and nondiscriminatorily.
These Middle Easterners put aside their disdain for the Western world just long enough so they can enjoy career opportunities, a more relaxed life and more money and then they immigrate and bring their old attitudes with them, and put them on display once they’re settled in.
All the queers in Egypt are likely rotting jail by now and all those in Iran are likely executed, hiding or trying to flee to neighboring Muslim majority republics like Turkey and maybe to Azerbaijan both likely the only 2 Muslim republics where being gay is legal but the Turkish-related languages official there are not related to Persian type languages spoken in Iran making a language barrier for gays escaping from Iran.
So no wonder so many of these people are not familiar with gays from back home, with gays in jail, executed, hiding or escaping.
Morgan,
Canada imposes this radical notion of multi-culturalism which resembles a step or two from Apartheid.
I would NOT be surprised if some typical Canadian, “Canada is better than America” type actually calls gays racist and islamophobic for not enduring this doctor’s homophobia.
In Quebec, we have tons of Middle Easterners, especially in my arrondisement Ahuntic-Montreal Nord. Yet Quebec requires that ALL immigrants to Quebec 1. learn French 2. respects the secular nature of Quebecois society which includes male-female equality, gay straight-equality. Of course Canadians try to paint Quebec as racist, but then again, Quebec welcomes far more immigrants(including me) than all other parts of Canada except Ontario.
This doctor should not only be charged, she should lose her liscence and she and her family should be deported!
Her attitude is unacceptable. All immigrant doctors have to get a Canadian license to practise and I assume take some sort of exam &/or present credentials. Included in this should be an explicit commitment to treat all Canadians, whatever their sexual orientation or marital status. Anything else is ridiculous. The doctor in question should find another profession if she doesn’t want to treat all patients. We fund our healthcare from taxes so that all Canadians can have good health care. I hope the human rights commission deals with this quickly and seriously and if necessary this go beyond it.
“foreign-trained physicians”
That says it all right there.
We are having a big ta-do about foreign-trained doctors in Canada, and accepting their licences along with them. What people forget is that in a lot of these little countries, only men are allowed to go to school to become doctors and they are taught NOTHING about female anatomy. Also, as we’ve just seen, they will refuse to treat people based on their religious views, and feel perfectly justified in it.
In defence of Muslim Canadians; the Muslim Canadian Congress ENDORSES same-sex marriage in civil law. Let’s not let one idiot spoil our views of the lot.
I find this rather embarassing as Manitoba is my home province. Bill Pope’s argument is a bit shabby. I hardly think that there are great numbers of western trained MD’s lined up to go practice medicine in Arab Muslim countries or Uzbekistan.
As a health-care provider and patient in Canada, this is no surprise at all. I recently went back to school for a graduate degree and did a clinical rotation in an endocrinology clinic where the physician responsible for treating the city’s transgendered population (also a foreign physician) told his residents that his clients “disgusted him”. As a patient, I am listed as a “single woman” at my city’s fertility clinic because although we eventually got my physician to believe we were in fact legally married (he felt this was not a right that pertained to our province), he said “well our paperwork doesn’t reflect gay marriage, so you can’t sign the husband and wife paperwork, just sign the single woman paperwork”. I hear some homophobic stuff from coworkers at times, but I will say, things will improve. I teach healthcare undergrads and am totally out – and they really don’t seem to bat an eyelid about the issue.