Over 600 B.C. residents have gone to U.S. for cancer care

Richard Mearow had already had his share of hardships before he was diagnosed with prostate cancer last August.

The elder with the Fort Nelson First Nation buried his daughter, Tracy, in 2022. Last year he lost his wife of 30 years, Edda, and his mother, Mary.

So when Mearow's doctor told him he could get radiation therapy more quickly in Bellingham, Wash., located about 40 kilometres south of the Canada-U.S. border, the 66-year-old jumped at the chance.

"She asked me, would I go down to Bellingham?" Mearow told CBC News, speaking from his home in Fort Nelson, around 1,000 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. "Because the waiting list was very long in Vernon for getting treatment. So I said, 'Let's go down there and get that done.'"

Mearow is one of 599 breast or prostate cancer patients who have completed their radiation therapy south of the border since patients started travelling to Washington state in mid-June 2023, with another 41 patients currently receiving treatment.

The majority of those who completed treatment – 457 – were breast cancer patients and the rest were treated for prostate cancer.

The data was released Thursday by Health Minister Adrian Dix during a press conference in Kelowna.

Dix also released a progress report one year into the province's 10-year cancer plan.

It says the province has decreased the waitlist for radiation therapy from 1,357 patients in 2022 to 1,208 last year.

The province has also noted improvements to the length of time people are waiting for radiation therapy – 80 per cent of patients are receiving radiation within the 28-day benchmark, up from 75 per cent in December.

However, that still puts B.C. near the bottom of the pack compared to other provinces and territories when it comes to radiation wait times and is well below the national average of 97 per cent.

"We need to do better in our response," Dix said Thursday. "It's why we took action to add radiation therapy in Bellingham, Washington. I think that practice has proven effective for us in producing an increase in the number of people who receive radiation within the clinically-appropriate time."

The report shows the province is falling short of its target to send 50 patients a week to Bellingham in order to ease the backlog of cancer patients waiting for treatment here in B.C.

Based on the 640 patients who have completed or are undergoing treatment, that averages to about 12 patients a week since last June.

Asked about those figures, Dix insisted the province is "fully utilizing" the Bellingham clinics.

The report says Bellingham clinics have provided 50 patient treatments per week, which are not necessarily for 50 patients a week.

For example, Mearow said he had five treatments per week over four weeks in February at Bellingham's PeaceHealth St. Joseph Cancer Center.

Need for cancer care closer to home

Mearow made the 10-hour journey to Bellingham alone, but made fast friends with fellow cancer patients he met in the waiting room, many of them fellow British Columbians.

He said he was struck by the compassion of the cancer care staff.

"To go through that and to have so many nice people behind you and treating you like you're a person instead of just a client ... it was just uplifting. Your spirit was uplifted."

Mearow said he was told the radiation reduced the cancer significantly and he's staying positive ahead of his checkup next month.

Paul Adams of the B.C. Rural Health Network has been pushing for cancer patients in rural and remote communities, like Mearow, to have equal access to faster treatment in Bellingham as those who live closer to the U.S. border.

CBC News asked B.C. Cancer and B.C.'s Ministry of Health for a breakdown by health authority of the 599 patients who completed treatment in Bellingham. Those figures were not provided by deadline.

Adams said the long-term goal should be getting people cancer treatment closer to home.

"Shipping people out of province is not an intended long-term consequence," he said.

B.C. United health critic Shirley Bond said the fact that the government is relying on the U.S. for radiation therapy is an indictment of a cancer system that has gone from among the best in Canada under the previous B.C. Liberal government to one of the worst. 

"It is very alarming to look at the circumstances in British Columbia today," Bond said.

The B.C. government is budgeting $34 million a year for the treatments, which includes patients' travel costs. Dix did not say how much the program cost in its first year.