Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping’s recent confirmation that the province’s health-care system is under significant stain due to the sharp spike in respiratory illnesses among young people should be a wake-up call for everyone.
In particular, residents should and must now make every effort to ensure that they don’t unduly burden a system already struggling to meet the critical needs of sick children.
And one way to do just that is to make sure that ambulance personnel, emergency room teams and other health workers are not called away from the job of helping the kids to deal with people injured in impaired driving incidents.
As they do every Christmas/New Year holiday season, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is currently undertaking its red ribbon campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of impaired driving and to encouraging every motorist in this country to do the right thing by driving sober.
The very fact that the campaign needs to take place every year highlights the sad fact that some drivers continue to think they know best when they certainly do not.
And anyone who mistakenly thinks the holiday season is a good time to put caution aside when it comes to drinking at parties and then getting behind the wheel should and must think again. The Don’t Drive Drunk message has been out there for years – and 2022 is certainly not a time to make any exception to that hard and fast rule.
With Alberta’s health system already hard-hit by the COVID pandemic and now dealing with the respiratory crisis impacting kids, the last thing anyone needs is for ambulances and emergency rooms to be tied up, even for one minute, dealing with drunk driving casualties.
Of course anyone coming across a suspected impaired motorist on any area highway and roadway this holiday season should immediately call 911 – helping to get the drunk off the road before he or she injures or even kills some unfortunate person or persons.
Dan Singleton is an editor with the Albertan.
