In an effort to address the shortage of primary care physicians, the a town on Vancouver Island awarded a $30,000 grant to the Westshore Primary Care Society for recruitment of a foreign-trained physician.
At a council meeting on Tuesday, March 18, View Royal council members unanimously approved to award funding to the society, which aims to support not-for-profit primary care options in the West Shore.
“The shortage of primary care physicians is one of the greatest challenges facing residents of our town and region,” Mayor Sid Tobias said in a news release. “Community wellness is a town priority and with many of our residents now lacking prenatal and primary care, Council is proud to respond to WPCS’s request for funds to recruit a new physician.”
The funds will assist GROW Health, a View Royal family practice and maternity clinic that lost three family physicians since 2022. Before 2022, the clinic employed nine physicians who served 7,200 patients.
“The importance of recruiting family doctors cannot be overstated,” said WPCS president, Spencer Cleave, in the release. “It has become a regular occurrence that women are delivering babies with no prenatal care and hundreds of patients, many of them in View Royal, are now without a family doctor.”
The grant to the society is one of several grants-in-aid council awarded to not-for-profit organizations including $50,000 for the SD61 crossing guard program and $7,500 for LifeCycles Project Society.
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