Few people have any idea of the number of people in Ontario afflicted with the debilitating, painful, often co-occurring and even life-threatening conditions of Environmental Sensitivity/Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (about 250,000), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (about 155,400) and Fibromyalgia (about 222,300). But it turns out that, in total, there are a whopping 650,000 of them (Statistics Canada 2010 and 2014 figures are roughly the same). Consider that these numbers place people with these conditions in the top 5 major chronic disease categories in Ontario and in Canada – 9 times more than the number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease, and 8 times more prevalent than Crohns.These sufferers and their families carry a huge burden of illness because in addition to the physical punishments they endure, they also face neglect, inappropriate treatment and stigmatization in Ontario’s health and social service systems; these, in turn, are the results of ignorance, obsolete ideas, inertia and lack of capacity.
https://goo.gl/BCH13J
ONTARIO’S TASK FORCE RELEASES ITS PHASE 1 RECOMMENDATIONS TO HELP PEOPLE SUFFERING FROM CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY BUT HEALTH MINISTRY ABDICATES AGAIN. HERE’S A NEW TAKE ON THAT REPORT.
For the province as a whole, this number of sick people creates a phenomenal, but unseen drag on the provincial economy and public purse. For it turns out that Ontario pays hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted revenue every year for what’s known as “inappropriate utilization” (aka ignorant, wasteful and even harmful treatment) – money that badly needs to be redirected to do good instead of harm and the amount lost due to lost productivity among patients and families dwarfs this figure.