Thank you.
I welcome that question, as a former medical officer of health and a public health physician and family physician by background. I'll comment briefly on the drugs. I want to get back to the concept of primary prevention.
Yes, it is important—I'll echo those comments—for care pathways that the appropriate patients be put on the appropriate medications to prevent disease from happening, and then after disease. There are care protocols. The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Ontario has put forward on their website a number of care pathways in the cardiology field.
Let me get back to the concept of primary prevention—the upstream. It is very important to decrease intake, because once we have a wait list for a procedure, it's too late. Some of these things clearly could have been prevented. What I'm talking about is healthy public policy. I'm talking about federal and provincial anti-smoking legislation; that is going to decrease intake. Over time you'll have seen tremendous changes in the incidence of certain diseases, with healthy public policy such as this.
Cardiovascular disease—heart problems, head problems, strokes—still remains the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in our society. One third of us are going to die from a heart problem, a stroke problem, or cardiovascular disease. What we're seeing is the fall-out of some bad eating practices, lack of activity, and smoking practices. As we decrease that, people will live longer. The whole concept of primary prevention is very important.
In Ontario, CCN is partnered with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. Last week we had a cardiovascular summit, and it really is to connect primary prevention to treatment, to secondary prevention, rehabilitation, palliation; to look at the continuum of care approach that's been here. Addressing things in isolation is still a silo approach; you need to look at the full spectrum.
In Ontario we have a cancer strategy and we have a stroke strategy, but we do not yet have a cardiac or cardiovascular strategy. We will be making recommendations to the two Ontario ministries of health--Ministry of Health Promotion, and Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care--and to the 14 local health integration networks in the near future.
Primary prevention cannot be neglected. Like family physicians...and I'm one. I still see patients every second Friday; I cover for my family doctors. I see the patients who can't get in to other family doctors and who rely on just a cookie-cutter approach. The reality is that prevention has to be raised in profile and in emphasis as well—a comprehensive solution.
That was my concluding comment: don't look at acute care in isolation; it needs to be connected for a comprehensive solution.
Thank you.