Residents of St. Lawrence rallied on Thursday to keep the local clinic open on weekends this summer. (CBC) Dozens of residents of a town on Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula rallied in steady rains on Thursday to protest the closure of weekend services at the town's medical clinic.
To accommodate summer vacation scheduling, Eastern Health is closing the clinic in St. Lawrence from Friday evening until Monday morning. For the rest of the summer, St. Lawrence residents will be directed to the regional hospital in Burin, about 40 kilometres away.
Eastern Health says the area will be served with a regional complement, including ambulances.
But Deputy Mayor Paul Pike told protesters, who held placards calling on Eastern Health and the Newfoundland and Labrador government to change the policy, that reaching the hospital is not necessarily that easy.
"People are talking about call times of 20 minutes, getting to Burin in 20 minutes. That's not so," he said.
"You can't get to Burin in 20 minutes if you have to call an ambulance. That ambulance, the one in Burin could be down over the road, or farther вЂ" could be in the Marystown area. The one in Lawn could be in Lamaline."
Residents of St. Lawrence successfully lobbied Eastern Health in early 2008 to drop a planned three-week closure.
With the latest cutback in service, though, residents have so far had no success.
