Family doctors — more specifically, a shortage of them — are shaping up to be a major election issue in New Brunswick.
Alan Price and his wife, Carla, of Campbell Settlement, N.B., are among the 180,000 New Brunswickers without a primary care provider, and they say that very fact will be top of mind come election day: Oct. 21.
“Mine’s health care, for sure,” Price responded, when asked what he considers to be his priority during this campaign.
Price began experiencing strange symptoms last year — one of which was the inability to move his left thumb.
“You’d think I’d had a stroke is what it looked like, really. Left side was going numb, left corner of the mouth would droop,” he recalled.
The couple’s family doctor was on vacation at the time, so he headed to the emergency department of the Upper River Valley Hospital in Waterville to seek …