The Ottawa Citizen (July 28) commented on the problems of delivering health care in rural areas. Winchester District Memorial Hospital, about an hour’s drive south of Ottawa, is the first rural teaching hospital in Eastern Ontario and the Citizen said it is on the right track by trying to improve access to the actual programs and treatments people in the area need. It is also focusing on education programs to deal with unhealthy lifestyles. Smoking rates are more than twice as high as they are in Ottawa and the gap in obesity rates is also significant. The Citizen said “The sooner other health professionals across the country realize that rural medicine is not just big-city medicine with hay fields, but represents a whole different set of challenges, the better.”

The New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal also looked at rural medicine in a July 27 editorial. It is greatly encouraged by new satellite physician training programs in Moncton and Saint John which it said should put the province “ahead of the national trend when it comes to rural recruitment.” It said these programs involve students from the province and expose them to rural medicine. “While Moncton and Saint John will serve as the hubs of medical education, students will work and study across the province, connected by high technology and a growing network of teaching physicians and researchers.” It said it is an established fact that doctors who have lived in a rural area are more than twice as likely to want to work in these areas — an important consideration in New Brunswick, the most rural province in the country.