Daily Archives: January 13, 2010

(The parents of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino, who died  on route to the Welland Hospital following a traffic accident on Hwy. 3 shortly before midnight on Boxing Day, have joined numerous others in Niagara’s southern tier in asking for an Ontario coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death.

Many, including Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor and Welland MPP Peter Kormos, want to know if the Niagara Health System’s decision last year to close the emergency rooms at the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospital sites could be a factor in Reilly’s death, since she died shortly before arriving on at the Welland hospital site which was further away.

Niagara At Large has run news commentaries on this tragedy over the past two weeks which can be viewed by scrolling further down this page.

Below we are sharing a transcript of the letter Reilly’s parents sent to Dr. Andre McCallum, Chief Coroner of Ontario, requesting a public inquest.) Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath came storming into south Niagara this week like a winter blizzard to slam the province’s Liberal government for letting emergency room services at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne die.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath and CAW Local 199 president Wayne Gates join area residents in front of beleaguered Fort Erie hospital site.

“The hardworking people of Niagara have the right to know that help will be there in a medical emergency or when a loved one gets sick,” said Horwath to a gathering of area residents outside Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital. “The McGuinty Liberals found billions of dollars to provide a tax giveaway to some of Ontario’s richest corporations, but they’re closing down local emergency rooms. That’s wrong.” Continue reading →

By William Hogg, MD

The people in Niagara’s southern tier are beginning to realize that dying in an ambulance today is more likely to happen than it was just a few months ago.

A most tragic death was that of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino a couple of weeks ago (this past Boxing Day) during her college break. She was badly injured in a car accident on the Garrison Road. It was a wintry-slippery, foggy night.

She died in the ambulance as it pulled into Welland hospital’s ER. If that ambulance had been able to go to her own home town’s hospital in Fort Erie, she would have been alive on arrival – not DOA. Continue reading →