B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake and Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo were at the Sorrento and Area Community Health Centre a week ago to hand out health-care goodies.
They announced funding for the centre along with a $60,000 Interior Health infusion to the struggling North Shuswap Health Centre Society over the next three years.
The centre receives the services of a nurse practitioner one day twice per month at the North Shuswap Health Centre in Scotch Creek, provided as an outreach service from the nearby Chase Health Centre. Interior Health also offers home health, public health and mental health and substance use services from Chase and Kamloops.
At the Columbia Shuswap Regional District, Area F director Larry Morgan said the North Shuswap Health Care Society needs $50,000 as a downpayment on the purchase price of $124,000 for a strata unit that currently houses the clinic.
“The clinic has been struggling but it is a well-organized society and what they’ve decided to do was put an offer on a strata,” he said, noting the clinic is essentially a community asset. “I have done this with a degree of caution and approached staff with caution. It is conditional on them being successful in fundraising and moving the clinic forward.”
Morgan says the clinic will likely be successful but he was trying to protect the CSRD in case the clinic is not or organizers fail to raise sufficient funds.