Dr. Justice

>> Paul Saba defends the rights of the sick

by PHILIP PREVILLE

Paul Saba takes his Hippocratic oath seriously--more seriously than others in his profession, it seems. He even quotes the oath on his personal résumé: "I will keep the sick from harm and injustice."

About a year and a half ago, Saba became concerned about Quebec's newly created drug insurance program. Even though their drugs were being subsidized, low-income people couldn't afford their medication. "I called the Corporation of Physicians to see what they were doing about it, and they weren't doing anything," Saba recalls. "They told me that, as far as they were concerned, defending the rights of the poor wasn't part of their mandate."

Working out of his clinic in Montreal West, Saba created the Coalition of Physicians for Social Justice, and began lobbying the government and organizing petition drives to change the drug insurance program. As far back as May 1997, he predicted what is now an accepted fact in Quebec: poor people are being hospitalized because they can't afford their medication, and some are even dying because of it.

"These aren't health reforms that the government is implementing," Saba told the Mirror. "They're budget reforms. This government is experimenting with the health of its population."

Worse still, says Saba, the government has been well aware of the problems for some time now. "I don't know what the bureaucrats and politicians are thinking," he says. "Maybe they're thinking: 'Well, we already don't have enough hospital beds, so if people can't afford their medication and can't get admitted to a hospital, they'll just die and they won't cost us anything.' Maybe that's what they're thinking. But I hope not."

During last November's election, the problems in the drug insurance plan made headlines. Saba intends to capitalize on the heightened public awareness in 1999. "At the very least, I want the government to create a list of essential medications--insulin, blood-pressure drugs, the drugs people need to live--and provide them to poor people free of charge," he says. "Those kinds of lists exist elsewhere. We desperately need one here."